The Life of Scum
by Onimiman
Summary: WARNING: This story is horribly offensive, and it starts off incredibly uncomfortable; read at your discretion. But anyway, this story is one where I aim to have two OCs of mine, Dev'lia and Lorangal, both of whom are horribly scummy characters, end up in a death match. Caution: rape and xeno are involved.
1. Chapter 1

Dev'lia the red-furred Bothan growled sensually as he leered down upon the naked blue-skinned Twi'lek woman who lay helplessly on his office desk. The woman - Relisa, he thought her name was - looked back up at him, not saying a word but nevertheless pleading with her eyes to not be violated.

But to Dev'lia - or "Devvy," as he had often liked to be called by his dancers - what he was doing wasn't a violation; no, it was liberation... liberation for himself anyway. When he first saw Relisa dance for him, he knew that he had to... try her out.

So he thrust into her, much to Relisa's plaintive mewls; and he did it again, and again, and again. Occasionally, he would feel for her body with his clawed, furry hands, taking care not to scratch one inch of her beautiful, turquoise body; damaged goods weren't going to gain a lot of attention, or, more importantly, credits on the stage. Besides, why would he ever want to damage a beauty such as this?

Dev'lia nearly shuddered and almost released himself into Relisa as he leered down upon her again; her mewls were so much more invigorating, he couldn't help but growl in delight once more. But in spite of that, he managed to control himself long enough to make sure that he got all of his "mileage" out of Relisa.

Two minutes of hard, continuous thrusting later, the Twi'lek finally shrieked in a mixture of both delight from the orgasm that she just experienced and the trauma that Dev'lia didn't care that he left in her mind. A second after that, the Bothan manager of Devvy's Dirties finally allowed himself to release his semen - which he knew wouldn't create any viable offspring in the Twi'lek - into Relisa's unwilling form.

Dev'lia then slumped onto his victim, breathing hard as his form was weighing in on her.

"Devvy, I... I can't breathe..."

"Oh, my apologies, my dear," Dev'lia said as he slowly pushed himself off the Twi'lek, pinning her wrists against the table while he did it. He then crouched to begin picking up his clothes, expecting Relisa to do the same for herself.

But that was when he felt more than heard Relisa trying to attack him from behind. He whirled away from her, standing up back to his full height at the same time, and raised his hands up in time to stop the now-crazed Twi'lek jumping onto him.

Dev'lia matched Relisa's manic screams with a low growl that imbued menace in lieu of sensuality. Regardless of the Bothan's fierce growl, however, Relisa continued to try desperately to claw her hands for her rapist's eyes.

And that was when Dev'lia allowed his clawed hands to sink into Relisa's wrists. The Twi'lek's manic screams turned to pain and shock as blood started to stream down both of her upraised arms.

Abruptly, Dev'lia then ripped his claws out of Relisa's arms, sending her to spin across the room where she ended up back on the desk. The flesh on both her arms were now in tatters, and blood now ran freely from her arms, seizing her into greater shock than before as the life was being drained out of her at a gradual, steady rate.

Dev'lia tilted his head in mild disappointment as he watched the writhing Twi'lek wring in her death throes on his desk. "What a shame," the Bothan said aloud.

He was about to give her that bonus that she said she needed; how dare she attack the man who would have given it to her?

Shaking his head in exasperation, Dev'lia then bent down again and began reaching for his clothes, which he put on in their expected order; gold-plated pants, a silver shimmersilk shirt, and his new shiny black boots made specifically for Bothan anatomy. When he was all done dressing back up, he reached for the body of the now-still Relisa.

He grabbed the corpse by the elbows and dragged her off his white metal desktop toward his office's right wall. There, he released one of the dead Relisa's arms to press a secret button that no one but himself - and the technician who installed it - could have known about. The section of the wall beneath his waist opened up to reveal an incinerator unit that Dev'lia made sure would break down every molecule of Relisa until she was completely vaporized; he got around the issue of dealing with fumes a long time ago, and installing a chimney in a public nude bar would have attracted too much suspicion, even on a world like Nar Shaddaa.

Actually, Dev'lia thought morosely as he hefted Relisa's corpse into the incinerator before closing the door, having to say or think "_even_ a world like Nar Shaddaa," as much as it was technically a moon, in that context was no longer the case. Ever since the moon was reclaimed by the now-weakened Hutts roughly seven years before - sometime after the Battle of Yuuzhan'tar that ended the Yuuzhan Vong War - Nar Shaddaa, and by extension Nal Hutta, had unofficially become extensions of the Galactic Federation of Free Alliances, which meant more strict law and order and thus less tolerance for rape and murder in Devvy's Dirties.

If there were any deities out there in the universe - and Dev'lia doubted that there were, except maybe for that Force of the Jedi's - the Bothan thanked whichever allowed for the fact that there were still dirty cops in the moon's Security Force that he could easily pay off for keeping incidents, like the one with Relisa just moments earlier, off the books. Too bad it was kind of a financial strain even with the profitable revenues of the bar, but Dev'lia understood that even in a life like his, compromises had to be made if his otherwise luxurious life were to continue.

At least his dancers had no families to speak of who might miss them, Dev'lia thought with some relief as he walked back to his desk, which was now stained with Relisa's blood. And the friends that each of these dancers had were only each other; and none of them dared to ask where one of their friends had gone if they didn't return from their boss's office, or else they might lose their jobs.

Dev'lia bent down to one of his desk's bottom drawers to pull out a translucent bottle of blood neutralizer - which Dev'lia saw was now half-full - and began spraying it on all of the areas in his office where Relisa bled. Half a minute later, all of the blood simply vanished as if by magic.

Except for the blood on Dev'lia's claws, and the red streaks that now streaked the bottle. The Bothan knew from secondhand accounts - through a past acquaintance of his who was in the slaving business before he was killed by a Jedi a couple years ago - that using a blood neutralizer on your hands would burn right through the flesh like hydrofluoric acid. So it was obvious that he was just going to have to wash his hands with some heavy-duty hand-sanitizer that he also kept in one of his desk's other drawers.

After washing his hands and making sure that they at least looked clean, Dev'lia took out a roll of paper towels in yet another drawer and used a few sheets to wipe the blood off of the neutralizer bottle. When that was done, he moved to place the bloodstained towel sheets to the same incinerator where he disposed of Relisa's corpse.

Once those sheets were all but burned to atoms, Dev'lia sat himself back down in his seat and sighed in weariness. Relisa was the sixth dancer in the past year who had dared to attack him. And while he was always prepared to get rid of them in case he had to murder them, as past experience from the pre-Yuuzhan Vong days had showed him, he was getting tired of having to dispose of such beautiful, luscious-looking women and girls.

Oh, yes, Dev'lia had an inkling that females like Relisa may have been a year or two beneath the minimum age range for consent, but he didn't much care so long as they appeared to be women. And consent wasn't really something that he looked for in his dancers anyway.

Still, he missed how easy it was to dispose of dancers who resisted him; back before the Vong invaded, he could just have his head of security come into his office, drag the bloodied corpse out, and take it out in full view of the bar and no one cared; and he didn't even have to bribe any corrupt cops to keep silent on it, since roughly ninety-five percent of the Security Force was corrupt back then anyway.

Now that Nar Shaddaa had a lot more respectability, he had to resort to tactics like the incinerator. And combine that with the bribes and this increased audacity on the part of his dancers to attack him every time he raped them, he was getting... fairly annoyed, it was safe to say.

He blamed this slight increase in attempted resistance against him on organizations like one of those matriarchal societies like the Hapes Consortium or those backwater Witches of Dathomir. Those places where women not only had rights but were altogether _superior_ to men disgusted Dev'lia; from his worldview, women _had_ to be beneath someone like him. If they weren't, then that would mean that _everyone_ could be a dancer on his stage; and he had no interest in letting men there. He, after all, had no interest in men, and he was pretty sure that his customers didn't either.

Shrugging the nostalgia away, Dev'lia reached for yet another drawer for a datapad to begin plotting out his employees' payments. But just as he was about give account for his head of security's cheque, he heard a knock from outside his office's door.

"Hey, boss," Boranc, Dev'lia's head of security, "are you still busy with Relisa?"

"Not anymore," Dev'lia replied, not setting the 'pad down. "She left. What is it, Boranc?"

"There are two very pretty ladies who want to become part of the Dirties," Boranc replied. The Dirties was the name that Dev'lia gave to his bar's dancers. "You interested in meeting them?"

"Just a second," Dev'lia replied as he set down his datapad. He then reached beneath his desk and pressed a button that activated his personal ray shield, harvested from the now-destroyed body of an ancient Trade Federation droideka before pressing the button that unlocked his office's door. "Send them in."

The door then opened, and in walked two particularly attractive (and identical, much to Dev'lia's silent delight), light-skinned redheaded women dressed all in black; their boots were high heels, and their pants and blouses, which allowed good views of their flat midriffs and sizable cleavages, were skintight, leaving very little to the imagination.

And that's the way Dev'lia liked it; he didn't much care for sexy women that had to make him visualize what was underneath. He never much liked surprises, especially if they might be weapons of angry women who wanted him dead for one reason or another.

Still, there was a reason that surprises were called surprises; and even with whatever search Boranc or Jerlacca - Boranc's Wookiee companion and partner in Dev'lia's Dirties - gave to these two lovely ladies, one could never be too prepared.

And now that Dev'lia was getting past these women's physiques and attire, he was now starting to notice other things about them; their stances and postures looked a little too... formal. And not formal in a way that looked like they had been raised to act royally - although, now that he focused in on their faces, they did seem to look _familiar_ - but their forms were executed in a way that made it look... militant.

Come to think of it, their clothes didn't really look all that much like dancer material, in spite of what their attire revealed about their bodies. Their clothes looked as if they were made for some practicality that he just couldn't pinpoint in his mind.

"I like your get-ups," the Bothan finally said to the twins.

"Thank you," the twin on the left replied.

"What are your names?" Dev'lia asked.

"I'm Trista," the same twin answered.

"I'm Taryn," the other followed.

Even their tones seemed to have this ineffable weight to them that he'd never seen in any of the previous women who had walked through his office door in all these years. They sounded like they commanded authority; and with that thought, Dev'lia was starting to think that they might not be dancer material if they didn't understand that, on the stage at least, they weren't men.

Still, Dev'lia was confident that he could break that spirit in them in time; and if not, well, there was always the incinerator...

Once he pressed the button that closed the door to his office, Dev'lia said, "Well, Trista, Taryn, I want you to strip for me. And do it in a way, as if you're trying to seduce an audience on stage. You've seen the most recent act outside, haven't you?"

"We have," the twins answered as one. Dev'lia couldn't help but note a tinge of disgust emanating from their unified tones. By now, Dev'lia knew, Puraka, one of the Togruta Dirties, was still doing her act on stage.

"Good," Dev'lia replied evenly. "Then I want you to take what you've seen and put your own spin on it. And if you fail to arouse me, then..." He tilted his head in thought. "I guess I'll just have to come up with a way for you to arouse me. But first..." He trailed off as he lifted a panel off to the side of his desk, where a series of buttons lay in wait.

Dev'lia pressed the topmost button, and a second later, the office was filled with erotic music.

"Go ahead," the Bothan said to Trista and Taryn.

Trista and Taryn looked at each other before looking back at Dev'lia. As one, they started to dance gracefully and seductively, but in a rather generic way; he'd seen it done a thousand times, but that didn't mean it couldn't be done just as well... or fail to arouse him.

And thankfully, the twins weren't failing in that. It wasn't long before they took off their blouses - slowly, oh, so, very slowly - before discarding them in separate directions across the room. Once they kicked off their boots and started to undo their pants, Dev'lia decided that would be the best time to undo his own.

Never taking his eyes off of Trista and Taryn, he noticed how they seemed to pause for just a short moment - as if they were perturbed at what he was now doing with his hairy groin - before they went back to their "recital."

Some time later, once they were all but down to their underwear, Dev'lia thought that he was about to unleash yet another load in as many minutes. But he decided to calm down his rhythm - he wanted to cum once they were completely naked.

Now they were reaching behind their bras. He could practically hear the hooks coming undone; Dev'lia didn't know how much he could take of this before his semen shot toward the ceiling.

As she slowly took off her bra with her left hand, Trista just as carefully reached her right hand toward her left breast.

And it was then that she quickly withdrew a small cylindrical device from within that cup of her bra, pressed one end of it, and threw it into the air. With her other hand, she kept her bra held against her body while using her free hand to catch the flung device, which was now a blaster that she aimed at Dev'lia.

Simultaneously, Taryn had taken out a similar cylindrical device and flung it toward Dev'lia's desk, where it latched onto the ray shield in midair. From there, the small machine crackled purple electricity that enveloped the entirety of the shield before fizzling Dev'lia's primary defense down to nothing.

"Turn that music off and put your hands in the air," Trista said as Taryn hooked her bra back on again. "Do it now, or I'll shoot you, you disgusting piece of male Hutt slime."

Now that reality had caught back up to Dev'lia, what with the coordinated activity that went by so quickly between the twins, he saw what his predicament was and stared back at Trista and Taryn in disbelief.

But that disbelief lasted for only a moment before he ducked beneath his desk, narrowly dodging the blaster bolt that Trista shot at him on his way down. There, beneath his desk, he grabbed the holdout repeating blaster and ducked back up to begin spraying rapid fire at the twins.

The mostly-naked women dropped to their stomachs before any of the bolts could hit their bodies. In response, Trista fired her own set of lasers toward Dev'lia, which he had already ducked beneath to hide under his desk once more. That lasted for only a second before he quickly leered to the left of his desk to launch a new stream of bolts for the twins, but they had already sprinted to their feet and headed toward the desk, rushing past the rapid fire headed their way.

They then vaulted over the desk, where they landed in graceful rolls on the other side of the office and just a few feet from Dev'lia. He retrained his repeater upon them, but at such close range, Taryn was able to kick the weapon out of his hands while Trista flipped the blaster in her hand so that its muzzle was now in her palm. She then smacked it across Dev'lia's head, knocking him unconscious.

Once that was done, the office door opened, and a tan-skinned woman with light brown hair, dressed in the uniform of a Hapan military captain, walked in with two armed guards at her side. Trista and Taryn stood at attention, forgetting for the moment that they were almost nude.

"What is the status of the target, Agents Zel?" the captain asked.

"Unconscious," Trista answered.

"But alive, Captain Grejana," Taryn concluded.

"Good," the captain said. "All the better that he face a proper Hapan execution for all that he's done."

Moments later, Dev'lia was in stuncuffs thanks to Trista, who had dressed back up with her sister, and they hauled the Bothan's unconscious form up, waking him up to face Grejana.

"You are the Bothan known as Dev'lia?" the captain asked.

He only growled in response.

"That is what I thought," Grejana replied. "You are under arrest for the disappearance of Agent Swera Helion three months ago." The captain then took out a datapad, activated it, and the face of a familiar dark-skinned woman hovered in the air. "Do you remember her? She had been sent in to investigate what you were doing in this bar out of a joint AG-Hapan operation. We never heard from her again. What did you do to her? Did you murder her?"

Dev'lia sighed. Of course he remembered Swera Helion. She posed as a potential Dirty and tried to outright kill him; but thanks to his droideka shield, the blaster bolt she sent his way ricocheted and hit her right in the chest, forcing Dev'lia to dispose of her body in the incinerator.

"We'll take that as a yes," Grejana said. "And we figured that you might have a defense such as a modified droideka shield; a lot of you scum these days like to employ it for personal defense, which is why Taryn over here used that miniature ion disruptor to short circuit your shield. So we were prepared for you this time. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in the court of Hapan law. You have the right to an appointed attorney if you are unable to afford one. She then shifted her attention to Trista and Taryn. "Take him away, ladies."

Trista shoved the reluctant and cuffed Dev'lia forward and out of the office. Outside, he saw that the bar was being cleared out by Hapan and Alliance of the Galaxy soldiers; he also saw that Boranc, Jerlacca, and all the other guards were also being stuncuffed and led toward the exit of Dev'lia's Dirties, just as Dev'lia himself was.


	2. Chapter 2

Even amidst being arrested and ferried off to the female-dominated Hapes Consortium, it was still appropriate to Dev'lia that he should be seated in the central passenger seat of the shuttle that was bringing him to his death in the Transitory Mists... or at least the central seat of his row of seats.

On either side of him, and across from him, were rows of his security guards from Dev'lia's Dirties, along with the corrupt police officers that he had bribed to keep quiet about the murders that he had commenced on those treacherous Dirties, and other beings whom Dev'lia had associated with - and whom he knew had aided him in one way or another in either raping or killing women in the past.

And looking over Dev'lia and all of his associates were four Hapan guards in total, two for each end of the passenger cabin, all of them armed with blaster rifles should any one of their prisoners find the ability to escape from the restraining harnesses that kept Dev'lia and his associates in their seats.

Not that any of the prisoners seemed to have any will to try to escape from their predicaments; they all sat quietly and silently fumed their rage and frustration inwardly, just as Dev'lia was doing right now. If any of them had any chance of escaping certain death by execution, as Dev'lia suspected that his associates would share in his fate for killing that Hapan spy all those months ago, the Bothan imagined that his scummy compatriots would keep quiet so that neither of these guards would burn a laser into any of the prisoners' heads.

"Hey, this is kriffin' bantha poodoo!" a Weequay prisoner finally blurted out. The exclamation came from the row across from Dev'lia's and several seats off to his right. "Why we all comin'? We didn't kill no Hapan bitches!"

Everyone remained silent, although Dev'lia could practically feel the restrained sighs from his fellow scum; he, too, restrained a sigh of pity for the Weequay. Without looking at the Hapan guard who was walking across the deck toward the Weequay, Dev'lia could already predict what the woman was going to do to the trapped moron, and perfectly timed it by the second.

_Three... two... one_.

The Weequay emitted a screech of pain, and Dev'lia looked to find that the guard had smacked the butt end of her blaster across the dumb alien's head.

"For those of you who are unclear," the guard who smacked the Weequay announced, "you are all being taken back to the Hapes Consortium to face charges not only against the women whom you have all raped and murdered, or otherwise aided in these horrible actions, who go beyond the jurisdiction of the Consortium!"

"But why?" the Weequay asked.

He received another smack across the head from the butt end of the rifle before the guard said, "If you haven't found out now, you'll find out later when you'll be given a holozine in your cell. Now shut up." The guard then turned and resumed her place at her end of the passenger cabin.

If it wasn't for the guards who demanded absolute silence from the prisoners, Dev'lia would have elaborated what he thought was going on to poor old Polluk.

Polluk the Weequay, one of the dumbest beings in the galaxy, was one of Dev'lia's oldest friends; they went as far back as elementary school, as a matter of fact. Polluk wasn't a particularly bright individual; his constant academic failures at school were something that Dev'lia couldn't remedy even with the tutoring hours that he wasted in trying to help the Weequay understand algebra. The only reason that these two remained friends was because Dev'lia amused him on a very base level for of his idiocy, and Polluk was grateful to have a friend who could tolerate his stupidity.

And if there was one thing they did have in common, it was that they loved to have sex with women, regardless of whether or not those women wanted to have sex with Dev'lia or Polluk.

Dev'lia had some fond times with Polluk. Back when the Bothan was attending business school on Bothawui - back before he had to ferry off to Nar Shaddaa when his "extracurricular activities" finally put him on suspicion and forced him to start his own business on the Smuggler's Moon - he and Polluk would gather with a few of their friends - who were aboard the shuttle, seated among the passengers - on weekend nights. They would drink, chitchat, and then finally go out and see if they could sucker a woman in a bar to join them for a rowdy time.

And if she refused, they had their ways of spiking her drink and making off with her.

That was Dredon's forte. Dredon, seated in Dev'lia's row several seats off to his left, was the Gran who was a particularly skilled and intelligent chemist; Dev'lia knew that the Gran's skills in legal and well-respected settings became too boring for him. So he headed over to Nar Shaddaa to start producing a drug called gestronophine, which allowed users to have such hyperactivity that they could have sex for a straight week with another person - without a single second's rest the whole way through - before their high finally ended and the user would die from complete and utter burnout.

Not that it bothered sales; Dredon made other drugs that were more profitable and had loyal repeat customers who were, most importantly, alive. But gestornophine was his favorite to make, simply because he liked knowing that there were people out there who were stupid enough to take a drug that would place them in such a position that they would be metaphorically signing their own death warrants; it made his superiority complex as a chemist, and as an intelligent being overall, swell with distinct pride.

Dev'lia appreciated that kind of egotism; it was what motivated Dredon to be in his group of rapists/murderers, and to concoct those knockout drugs for their helpless sex toys.

Oh, those were the days, Dev'lia lamented. Back when he, Polluk, Dredon, and their other two friends - Goik and Hoik, the mostly silent Bith twins who liked to eat the corpses of the group's dead victims once they were done - could screw their victims out to their hearts' content and do whatever they wanted with them. They could take their frustrations out on the women; frustrations such as not having girlfriends, being rejected by strong-minded women who saw them for being perverts, idiots, egotists, creeps all around, etc. And there weren't many weak-minded women around on Bothawui either; and what few there were usually had friends with them who were strong-minded, and who could tell that Dev'lia and his entourage were no good; of course, they might also be joined in getting raped along with their weak-minded friends.

Hell, there was even the option of taking out their rage and anger on things that they had very little control over otherwise, such as homework assignments, stress resulting from upcoming exams, getting harassed by fellow students or coworkers at whatever jobs they held, or whatever else troubled the boys' minds, they could purge those frustrations - even if they weren't necessarily purging their responsibilities - and feel better at the end of the night.

And by the time Dev'lia had established himself on Nar Shaddaa years later, and the others went about doing their own things - Dev'lia knew that Polluk was a low-level drug distributor for an employee he never met nor knew the name of, which Polluk, given his general lack of ambition, was completely fine with - they had all been living lives where they could pretty much do what they wanted. For Goik and Hoik, though, Dev'lia wasn't sure what exactly they did, but every time he met with them and asked a question as to what they did with themselves in the short conversations that he had with the twins, they always answered in an eerily unified tone with, "Being in the best job ever."

The only elaboration that Dev'lia ever got was from word off the street; that there were two Bith who were grave diggers in one of Nar Shaddaa's cemeteries who happened to be "creepy," as he would overhear some of his Dirties when they were chitchatting with each other before a show. Dev'lia could only imagine why the brothers would love that job so much...

Alas, it looked like all of their lives would be over once they finally made it to the Hapes Consortium. Dev'lia understood that, just as the Galactic Alliance and Imperial Remnant had merged to create the Alliance of the Galaxy several months earlier, the Hapes Consortium was now considering to unite with the AG to create an even stronger government.

And it seemed that the capture and arrest of so many murderers, rapists, and supporters of one and/or the other from Nar Shaddaa would finally be taken to be executed.

But, as if to contradict his thoughts, the shuttle suddenly lurched, nearly throwing the four guards to the deck. One of the guards - the same one who smacked Polluk across the head - who was stationed at the entrance that led to the ship's cockpit peered through the threshold and asked the pilot and copilot, "What is happening?"

"We have been pulled out of hyperspace along with our AG escort!" From his vantage point in the passenger cabin, Dev'lia didn't know whether it was the pilot or copilot who answered the guard.

Dev'lia had to crane his head just as his fellow prisoners were doing to see what was happening; and from what little they could see of the cockpit's viewport, it appeared as if a small fleet of ships of various makes was laying in wait ahead. Right now, two starfighters - Dev'lia identified them as an X-wing and a Y-wing, though he could be wrong - already headed for this shuttle.

"They have us in a tractor beam already!" the same voice from the cockpit continued. "We can't move!"

Moments later, the ceiling of the shuttle was pierced in two places from two purple beams of light; one of them separated the row of seats that Dev'lia sat in from the middle of the cabin, while the other beam separated the row of seats just across from Dev'lia from the cabin's midsection.

And then both beams enveloped the rows in sheets of light that preceded the pings of what Dev'lia presumed to be laser bolts against the hull of the shuttle.

Seconds after the initial set of pings, the ceiling blew open, expelling the atmosphere of the ship and blowing the four guards, the pilot, and the copilot out through the giant hole and into the hard vacuum of space.

And all the while, Dev'lia and his fellow prisoners, though they were confused and scared at what was going on, sat in relative safety within their protective force fields as the stars whirled above them.

Which meant that the ship was being pulled toward the vessel that tractored it.

Several minutes passed, and then the stars were replaced by the dingy, dark grey ceiling of what was no doubt the hangar bay of a capital vessel of some sort. Once everyone felt that the torn-open shuttle was docked on the bigger ship's deck, the force fields that once separated the prisoners from vacuum deactivated, and Dev'lia and all of his compatriots smelled air that had been recycled too many times to be pleasant or remotely fresh to breathe without feeling mildly nauseous.

Then, to the prisoners' shock, a male Zabrak leaped in through the hole above, as if from out of nowhere, and landed in a feline-like crouch in the center of the passenger cabin before gracefully standing up. He looked out among the startled men before taking out a vibroblade from his pocket, which he then used to slice through Dev'lia's restraining harness in one swift turn.

Dev'lia then stood up, looked at the Zabrak in the eyes, and courteously said, "Thank you."

The Zabrak didn't even acknowledge the Bothan before the former turned to the prisoner seated on Dev'lia's left and cut through the metal harness. Once that prisoner was freed and standing, the Zabrak continued down the row before turning around to begin freeing the prisoners behind him.

By the time he had freed all of the prisoners, and they were all on their feet, the shuttle's boarding ramp at the rear had been lowered from outside. There, two human male technicians - one a young light-skinned lad who looked like he was halfway through his twenties, the other a middle-aged dark-skinned fellow - waited stoically at the bottom.

The Zabrak turned to the direction of the lowered boarding ramp and headed there. The freed prisoners stood standing in confusion for a moment before Dev'lia shrugged and said, "I guess we follow him." He then followed their freer toward the exit of the ramp, and then the rest of Dev'lia's compatriots followed suit.

Once they were all out on the deck in which the shuttle had been docked, Dev'lia and his fellows all saw that they were in what looked like a rundown hangar bay of a Star Destroyer that looked like it had been severely damaged; Dev'lia could see loose wires and panels all throughout, damaged circuit boards, scorch marks on the walls.

"This place looks nasty," Polluk commented to Dev'lia. The Weequay had joined his childhood friend after they had departed from the shuttle.

"No kidding," Dredon, who was also with Dev'lia and Polluk, said in a hushed tone. "I imagine that this Star Destroyer was taken, and a firefight had ensued between the original crew and those who wanted this ship."

"How can fire fight?" Polluk asked.

Dev'lia had to raise a finger at Dredon's face to keep the Gran from bursting out into a rant about Polluk's stupidity; with his eyes, Dev'lia managed to commune to Dredon not to insult Polluk, since it made the Weequay cry a lot after.

Dredon had ranted about the lengths of Polluk's stupidity before, and the Weequay had wept for a good hour after that. During that time, Dev'lia had told Dredon never to do that again; Polluk may be an idiot, but he was also their friend, and if Dredon could not accept that fact, then he could no longer be part of their group.

Dredon had sighed and learned to accept Polluk's stupidity after apologizing to the dumb Weequay. From then on, Dredon could only learn to take amusement from Polluk's idiocy, just as Dev'lia had done.

"A firefight is when people shoot at each other," Goik said. He and Hoik were walking behind Dev'lia, Polluk, and Dredon now.

"Then why is it called that?" Polluk asked.

"Because fire is also another word for lasers when lasers are being shot," Hoik said.

Dev'lia grinned; if there was any two people in the galaxy who could learn to handle Polluk's stupidity, it was Goik and Hoik. They said nothing more than what they had to, even if it was to elucidate knowledge toward the dumb friend Polluk.

"But I thought fire was the stuff that burns," Polluk said.

Before either of the Bith twins could elaborate, one of the doors of the Star Destroyer's hangar bay up ahead had opened, and an aged Hutt - Dev'lia could tell because he was especially large, bloated, and full of wrinkles on his already leathery skin - slithered inside. Now filing up beside him from behind were a contingent of half a dozen guards - each members of various species - armed with blaster rifles that looked more aged than the ones that the late Hapan guards who were blown out of the shuttle had carried with them.

"Greetings, gentlemen!" the old Hutt boomed throughout the spacious hangar bay in passable Basic. "I am Begranda Degrona Jaluub. And I presume that you are wondering why you are all here?"

"Yeah, why are we all here, Mister Jaluub?" Polluk asked.

Begranda and his guards, along with everyone in the bay who wasn't a recently-freed prisoner, looked at the Weequay in confusion.

Stifling the urge to just begin telling Polluk that the Hutt was about to tell them why they were all here anyway, Dev'lia stepped in in front of his Weequay friend and smiled at Begranda.

"Do not mind my friend, sir," Dev'lia said with a nervous smile and a practiced formal tone. "He is... not well-versed in the nuances of communicative exchange."

"For you, Dev'lia, I will gladly take exception with your friend," Begranda said as he slithered toward the Bothan. "For that is why you are here; I have saved you from certain death in the Hapes Consortium so that you may set up your establishment elsewhere."

"Establishment?" Dev'lia asked. "You mean Dev'lia's Dirties?"

"Of course," Begranda answered. "And it will be in the Unknown Regions, far from the reaches of either the Alliance of the Galaxy or the Hapes Consortium."

"What about the Chiss Ascendancy, sir?" Dev'lia asked.

"It is beyond even the bounds of those willful isolationists," Begranda said. "And besides, I made a deal with them never to interfere with my territory. So, Dev'lia, my good man, I hope you want to reopen your business, because I would really hate to have done all this for nothing. Although I'm sure that Lasaunge, the gentlemen who freed you from your bounds in that shuttle, would have quite a time freeing you from the bonds... of mortality."

Begranda then gave an indicative nod toward the Zabrak who liberated Dev'lia and his compatriots from the Hapan ship; his vibroblade was still brandished, and his body, standing on alert, looked as if he would be ready to kill every one of the prisoners at a moment's notice from his Hutt master.

Dev'lia regarded the deadly Zabrak with mild fear before looking back at Begranda with his nervous smile renewed. He chuckled mildly and said, "There is no need for that, Your Greatness." Then, in a stumbling tone, he quickly added, "With all due respect, of course. I'm completely willing to reestablish Dev'lia's Dirties in any viable location that is outside the reach of either the Alliance of the Galaxy or the Hapes Consortium."

"I'm glad to hear it, my good man," Begranda said. "So, since we are in agreement..." The Hutt trailed off as he widened his arms out to the small crowd of freed prisoners. "How about a celebratory dinner in honor of this partnership?"

The crowd of prisoners-turned-guests all gave varied responses of agreement.

"I do love food, sir!" Dev'lia could hear Polluk say this last one.

"Then if you will all follow me," Begranda said before turning around. He then slithered toward the exit of the hangar, his guards falling behind him, as Dev'lia and the other guests allowed themselves to be led by the Hutt and his guard contingent.


	3. Chapter 3

The following dinner aboard what Dev'lia learned was the Star Destroyer _Be Grand_ - a play on words with Begranda's name - was more decent than the Bothan could have expected from a Hutt who was hiding out in the Unknown Regions. The food was more than acceptable for everyone in attendance - with the exception of the guards who were on watch duty - and Dev'lia and Begranda went back and forth as to how the revival of Dev'lia's Dirties would go about.

As their half-business-transaction-half-idle-chitchat proceeded, Dev'lia, who was seated to Begranda's left, found that the Hutt, who sat at the very head of the table, to be fairly typical for his species: he was an egotistical, business-minded, ruthless criminal who would do anything to try to get his way.

The one thing that Dev'lia found to be interesting about Begranda, though: the Hutt's view of his own species.

"I once thought of my species to be as superior to others mere years ago," Begranda elaborated to Dev'lia before swallowing a live morsel from the plate before him. "That was until the Yuuzhan Vong came."

Dev'lia nodded after swallowing the chunk of nerf steak that he had just chewed. He had remembered when the Vong came into Hutt space for the brief alliance; seeing how the invaders treated worlds like Dantooine and especially Ithor beforehand, Dev'lia knew that Hutt space wouldn't be far behind. So he had closed down Dev'lia's Dirties, left his dancers behind on Nar Shaddaa - where he never saw them again after the in-name-only Smugglers' Moon had been reclaimed after the war - and fled to Mon Calamari, just as the New Republic would after Coruscant fell to the Vong. After arriving at Mon Calamari, Dev'lia felt both aggrieved and relieved when Hutt space became contested between its native inhabitants and the invaders; aggrieved that his home was gone, and relieved that he got out just in time.

"I'm sure you know what happened in those days," Begranda continued. "Which was why I felt ashamed of my people when I saw that they couldn't beat the Vong back, or destroy them altogether, as your people would have it, Dev'lia. However, I couldn't launch much of an offensive when the rest of my brethren were so weak; a krayt dragon is a mighty animal, but without allies, even it cannot stop a massive horde of vicious womprats from taking its territory.

"So I had to flee, and I took refuge in the Unknown Regions. Originally, I had some problems with the Chiss, since I was impeding on contested territory. The contesting didn't last long, though, for with a few bribes to some high-placed officials - which took a lot out of my bank account, given my species's dwindling resources thanks to the Vong - I was able to secure a planet for myself where I opened up some trading routes for them."

"What did you trade in?" Dev'lia asked. "I beg your pardon, Your Greatness, but I don't imagine that you had much with you when you fled from Hutt space to the Unknown Regions."

"Oh, I had some considerable assets with me," Begranda said, "which went beyond mere credits. And it was just enough to establish myself and set up a mining colony on the unnamed world I set myself up on; precious gemstones was the primary selling point to the Chiss, in case you're wondering."

"Lucky for you that you got there before the Chiss did?" Dev'lia asked.

Begranda chortled. "Oh, indeed. You can imagine why it had been so hotly contested by those ice-cold humanoids. But we have been good partners since, and trade has since boomed after the Vong were driven out into this region of space. Thankfully, we haven't encountered them or that living planet of theirs."

"I'm glad to hear it," Dev'lia said casually before taking a last bite of his steak.

"You don't share in your people's view of _ar'krai_ for what the Vong did to Borsk Fey'lya?" Begranda asked. "I imagine you would have more animosity against the invaders."

Dev'lia shrugged his shoulders. "I'm not much of a traditionalist among my people; after all, not too many other Bothans establish setups like Dev'lia's Dirties like me. And I didn't care much for Fey'lya anyway; I'm not particularly fond of politics, let's just say."

Begranda gave a booming laugh. "Quite understandable, Dev'lia, my good man. And quite wise, too; I, myself, do not care much for it, either. Alas, however, I had to be in that unfortunate business of communicating with the Chiss just to secure that planet of mine; bribes go a long way, but formalities must still be followed, if you know what I mean."

Dev'lia nodded in understanding.

"So are you simply happy that the Vong aren't around anymore, if not altogether wiped out?" Begranda asked.

"Isn't everyone?" Dev'lia retorted.

Begranda gave yet another booming chuckle. "Indeed. Still, I would personally feel a lot safer if none of those disgusting invaders remained at all."

Dev'lia shrugged. "So long as I never see another Vong again, I don't care if they're hiding out on a living planet, exterminated, or ascended to a higher plane of existence that no mere mortal can comprehend," the Bothan said snidely. "Again, I'm not much of a traditionalist. Although I admire my people's ability to not only exterminate entire species but wipe away any and all records of those species' existences, I don't really see the need to condone it, honestly; if the enemy's surrendered, then the war's won. No need to go any further, I say."

"Sounds very even of you," Begranda commented. "I am most surprised to hear such a platitude coming from you."

"Why, because of my species?" Dev'lia asked curiously. The Bothan wasn't much offended when someone else assumed something about him because of his species; he found that such people who took offense at other people presuming this or that about them because of their trait was quite petty. There were plenty of bigger things out in the universe to get angry about, and whining about someone who made a presumptuous comment was the last thing to get Dev'lia angry.

Besides, even if Dev'lia did take offense at Begranda's comment, he didn't think he could afford to whine; the Hutt was a very powerful being, and saying or doing the wrong thing could get Dev'lia into a lot of trouble.

"No, because, honestly," Begranda said, "and I have to be frank with you, it seems surprisingly... moral, given what you like to do with your... free time, as it were."

Dev'lia emitted a light chuckle. "You know, that's the thing that amuses me a lot whenever I watch a holodrama; whenever there's a bad guy, they're totally bad, nothing redeemable about them. Or, if there are bad guys with some depth, it's usually something that makes 'em bad, you know what I mean, Your Greatness?"

"I have seen my fair share of holodramas featuring morally ambiguous characters, so I know what you mean," Begranda conceded. "Go on."

"Well," Dev'lia continued, "I just find it interesting that if a bad guy is bad, they're pretty much bad all over; even things that are outside their motivations or goals seem to be steeped in evil, if that makes any sense. Me? Just 'cause I like to rape and kill women doesn't mean I like to condone genocide if it's unnecessary."

Begranda gave another laugh. "Well said, Dev'lia, well said." The Hutt then lifted up his drinking goblet. "To moral complexity?"

Dev'lia mirrored Begranda's stance with his own goblet. "To moral complexity." The Bothan and Hutt then clinked their metal cups before drinking the alcoholic contents from them.

Across the table from Dev'lia, Dredon the Gran cleared his throat, attracting both Begranda and Dev'lia's attention.

"Excuse me, Your Greatness," Dredon said to Begranda, "but something just occurred to me: How did you manage to pull the shuttle ferrying us out of hyperspace along with that AG ship without pulling any of the other ships from the AG-Hapan fleet? I'm very curious about that, it sounds like something that would have to be done with great precision."

"Well, if you must know," Begranda said patiently, "it is because we had a spy in the Alliance of the Galaxy fleet, Mister Dredon. He gave us the information about which ship would be carrying you and your fellow prisoners, and we had our hyperspace mine targeted just for you; it's a little function that has only been a fairly recent development, as shared by some certain individuals among the Chiss. Granted, there was a slight miscalculation in that it pulled out one of the AG ships, but thankfully, it was nothing too extreme. It is something that is being looked into, however."

"May I help look into it?" Dredon asked. "Though chemistry may be my passion, I always held a fondness for engineering."

Begranda smiled as he looked at Dev'lia. "What do you say, my man?" the Hutt asked the Bothan. "Do you think that Dredon can serve as a good scientist in my crew?"

"I'd vouch for him," Dev'lia said.

"Then that's good enough for me," Begranda said before looking back at the Gran. "Mister Dredon, you can start tomorrow."

"Oh, thank you, sir!" Dredon said enthusiastically. "I won't let you down, I promise!"

Inwardly, Dev'lia smirked; though Dredon was always arrogant and had so much superiority about himself and his ego, he also possessed the intelligence to know when not to flaunt his superiority to others, particularly to potential bosses. So the Gran felt no blows to his ego if he had to debase himself by making himself look like an enthusiastic intern if it meant that he would get the job.

Speaking of jobs...

"Pardon me, Your Greatness," Dev'lia said to Begranda, shifting the Hutt's attention away from Dredon, "but something just occurred to me; since the rescue of my friends and I led to the deaths of a few AG and Hapan officials, I imagine we'll be on those governments' radar, right?"

Begranda waved a hand in dismissal. "I understand your concern already, Dev'lia. And I can tell you this: should anyone from either the Alliance of the Galaxy or that ridiculous woman-run Hapes Consortium ever come to my system to look for you and your friends, they will have hell to pay; that much I can assure you."

.

Given the recent loss of the sex criminals from the Outer Rim, Hapan Queen Mother Tenel Ka Djo couldn't help but nurse her one hand across her forehead in irritation. After all the calls and threats that she had received from some very angry Duchas who were outraged that those prisoners were lost, Tenel Ka was ready to just collapse on her appropriately queen-sized bed in her unnecessarily luxurious bedchamber.

Before she could do that, however, she had to address the concern of the lost prisoners with her fellow galactic ruler, Alliance of the Galaxy Chief of State Cal Omas.

Seated in her throne, Tenel Ka replaced her one hand from her forehead down to the arm of the grand chair that she sat in before she nodded to the holocam operator before her. The dark-skinned woman operating the sizable contraption returned the nod and wordlessly activated the device that brought up Cal Omas's blue-tinted visage.

"Chief of State Omas," Tenel Ka addressed. "It is good to be speaking with you again, even under this circumstance."

"I agree," Omas replied evenly. "However, before we get started on speaking of this matter, I would appreciate it if you would allow your holocam operator to allow the speaker with me to communicate with you; it seems that he doesn't have any reception right now."

"Other speaker?" Tenel Ka asked. "And who would that be, Chief Omas?"

"Jedi Grand Master Solo," Omas answered.

Tenel Ka allowed her surprise to slip up for a fraction of a second before just as quickly replacing it with her calm demeanor again. "Why, sure- um, I mean, yes, Chief Omas, I will see to that," the Queen Mother said.

She then looked at the operator again, nodded, and the operator pressed another button.

And just like that, the blue-hued form of Jacen Solo appeared next to Cal Omas's face.

At the sight of Jacen, Tenel Ka nearly felt overwhelmed; she had not seen Jacen since the end of the Yuuzhan Vong War all those years ago, during his uncle Luke Skywalker's conclave on the living world of Zonama Sekot. Tenel Ka fondly remembered the late Jedi Master telling every Jedi gathered there that the ways of the Old Jedi Order were a thing of the past; that the rigid rules and doctrines were to be replaced by allowing each individual Jedi to pursue his or her own path for the good of him- or herself and for the rest of the galaxy.

Tenel Ka never had a chance to speak to Jacen, though; at the time, postwar matters in the Hapes Consortium saw to it that much of her time would be taken and guaranteed that her social life with all of her friends had been over. She didn't see much of Jacen's sister, Jaina, or any of the others who had survived that dreaded Mission to Myrkr during the Vong War.

And Tenel Ka felt bad that she was unable to attend Jaina's marriage to Jagged Fel over on Csilla or in Jacen's promotion to Jedi Master on Denon sometime after he returned from his five-year sojourn after the war.

In fact, Tenel Ka felt bad about not bearing witness to the Battle of Korriban that revealed the existence of a secret Sith sect called the One Sith, which was, thankfully, vanquished from the galaxy after seeing to the death of Luke Skywalker. And even with the knowledge that Jacen was granted the title of Grand Master by Master Skywalker's dying breath, Tenel Ka was not excluded from the sadness that permeated the Force from all of the Jedi following Luke's demise.

And it was even harder for Tenel Ka that she couldn't be there for Jacen and his friends and family at Luke's funeral; for a while, Tenel Ka had half a mind to simply give up her title of Queen Mother and let the Consortium fall into the hands of some corrupt and power-mad Ducha who would surely have led the government to ruin in some way. Alas, however, Tenel Ka knew that it would have desecrated Master Skywalker's memory and the meaning of the words that he spoke to the entire Jedi back on Zonama Sekot all those years earlier.

But that still didn't make things easier for her; that she couldn't be with Jacen, the one man she had ever loved, even if it was just to comfort him in his grief, and to support him as he gained a level of responsibility comparable to Tenel Ka's own.

In spite of her feelings for him in the past - and the feelings that she still harbored for him now, just looking at him through this distilled, static-filled image - Tenel Ka managed to maintain her queenly composure and addressed Jacen as it was proper to do so: "Grand Master Solo, it is also good to see you." At least what she said to him was the truth, Tenel Ka thought.

Jacen nodded. "It is good to see you as well, Your Majesty," he said.

Without missing a beat, Tenel Ka then divided her attention between Jacen and Omas. "But since this is not a social call," the Queen Mother said, "I propose that we cut through the pleasantries and address the matter at hand: the situation of the missing sex criminals from Nar Shaddaa and how this will affect the union between the Hapes Consortium and the Alliance of the Galaxy."

"It is clear that without the capture of the criminals," Omas said, "the Hapes Consortium will not be as accepting of joining the Alliance of the Galaxy; which is why Master Solo here already has a plan."

"I would like to inform you, Your Highness," Jacen said, "that I have already assigned a Jedi task force to look into the disappearance of these prisoners, along with the losses of the Alliance of the Galaxy and Hapes Consortium personnel. This task force is reporting back to me on a daily basis with updates as to their progress; should they tell me of anything substantial about the prisoners, I will directly inform both you and Chief Omas about the whereabouts of the prisoners."

"That is most definitely acceptable, Grand Master Solo," Tenel Ka said.

"Until that time comes," Omas interjected, "I propose that we hold off any further discussions about integrating the Hapes Consortium as another branch of the Alliance of the Galaxy to a later date. Do you agree, Your Majesty?"

"I do, Chief Omas," the Queen Mother said.

And with Jacen being there as she said that, there was a twinge of pain that struck Tenel Ka's heart; no from that of a vibroblade or the effect of a poison from some treacherous Ducha, but something endowed purely in emotion.

"Very well," Omas said. "Then may the Force be with you, Your Highness."

Tenel Ka nodded. "As with you, Chief Omas, Master Solo."

After Omas's image disappeared, Jacen said, "Farewell, milady." And then his image was gone, too.

"Be gone," the Queen Mother said to the holocam operator.

The subordinate pulled the hovercart carrying the holocam back across the throne room toward the now-open doors. Once the operator was gone, and those doors had closed, Tenel Ka stood up and turned to the right of the throne room where she approached the door leading to her private bedchamber, keeping up her calm, majestic composure all the while, if only for the vidcams that were stationed in various places along the room's ceiling for security reasons.

Once the Queen Mother was inside her private bedchamber, and the door behind her was closed and securely locked, Tenel Ka walked right up to her plush bed and collapsed on her stomach there as she began to weep into the fluffy pillow at the head of the bed.

In spite of her warrior nature, attitude, and personality, her responsibilities as Queen Mother were really taking a toll on her, so she felt that it was appropriate that in the comfort and security of her bedroom, where there were no eyes or ears - Hapan or security device-wise - to witness her emotions run freely like this. Combine that with the fact that she had missed out on so much of her friends' lives, where she was beginning to wonder if they really were her friends anymore, and just seeing and speaking to Jacen, as curtly and as formally as she did just now, really hurt Tenel Ka deep down.

And the knowledge that Jacen was taken by a woman who wasn't capable as a Jedi or combatant even with her Force-sensitivity, and with whom Jacen had an illegitimate child with, and Tenel Ka wondered if she was ever going to have anything that she really wanted in this world.

If it weren't for her firm notions of responsibility and duty, Tenel Ka would trade her entire ruling of the Hapes Consortium just for one blissful, beautiful night with Jacen...


	4. Chapter 4

Following the _Be Grand_'s final dropout from hyperspace, Begranda wasted virtually no time in shuttling himself, Dev'lia, and all of the Bothan's associates from the stolen Star Destroyer to the planet ahead.

The unnamed world that the shuttles traveled to was a barren, mottled rock of sand and dust, peppered with large, chrome domes across the surface that were placed miles apart from each other.

After the shuttle ferrying Dev'lia and Begranda broke through the planet's atmosphere, Dev'lia saw these domes from the window near his seat and turned to address Begranda.

"Are those colonies?" the Bothan asked the Hutt casually.

"They are," Begranda confirmed. "Mining colonies, to be specific; it's how our economy flows with the Chiss."

Dev'lia nodded with a raised brow; he was quite impressed by the way Begranda was so productive.

Minutes after the shuttle flew through an aperture that opened on the top of one of the domes, it docked in a hangar bay populated by several other vessels, but no one present. From there, Dev'lia and Begranda disembarked with the Hutt's retinue of guards, which included the deadly Zabrak Lasaunge, and Dev'lia allowed the guards to escort himself, with Begranda, toward two hovercabs; one took Begranda, Lasaunge, and a few other guards, while the other cab took Dev'lia and the guards escorting him.

Half an hour later, the cabs, having brought them out of the hangar bay and through the trafficked corridors of the dome colony, dropped Dev'lia, Begranda, and their escorts to a sizable two-storey building, where the Hutt led the way inside.

"So, Dev'lia, my good man," Begranda said, "what do you think?"

Dev'lia looked at the surroundings of the auditorium that Begranda promised would be the next Dev'lia's Dirties. Metal tables and comfortable seats had been set up throughout the would-be strip club; to the right was the counter that would serve as the club's bar, with wooden stools placed upside-down along the counter. Behind the bar were rows of shelves where bottles of alcohol would no doubt be placed once the club got into business, and a back exit at the furthermost corner of the bar.

To the near left of the auditorium was a public washroom with no distinctions for gender or species. At the far left was an unmarked door which Dev'lia figured would be his office.

And at the far end of the would-be club was a large, raised dais that stood a meter off the ground from the rest of the auditorium, with a silver, metallic pole that extended from the floor of the dais to the ceiling.

Dev'lia smiled before looking back at Begranda. "It's perfect!" he exclaimed boisterously with raised, pumped fists.

"Excellent," Begranda replied in a more restrained form. "In that case, I leave the development of the bar in your capable hands."

"I won't let you down, Your Greatness," Dev'lia said as he shook hands with the Hutt. "And thank you for allowing me to restart my business like this."

"You can thank me by growing a profitable business here," Begranda said not unkindly. "As you can imagine, the miners here like to have suitable entertainment after a long, hard day at work."

Once Begranda and Dev'lia stopped shaking hands, Lasaunge produced, from the folds of his loose, black shirt, a datapad and handed it over to Dev'lia.

"This will be your workpad," Begranda elaborated to Dev'lia. "It will be what you can use to develop and grow this new club. So, Dev'lia, my good man, until I choose to stop by to see how this new investment is working out, farewell." The Hutt then offered a small bow in the Bothan's direction.

Dev'lia imitated a deeper bow out of respect for his new employer. "Farewell, Your Greatness."

With no further words, Begranda turned around and slithered out of the soon-to-be bar with Lasaunge and the other guards following suit. Once they were all gone, Dev'lia turned back and continued to regard the bare surroundings, imagining how this place would look, and subsequently operate, once he had everything sorted out.

He then headed over to the room at the far left, which was set up with a table and chair in the center, and sat down to begin working out the logistics of preparing the new Dev'lia's Dirties.

.

"Why have you not gotten those rapists yet?!" Ducha Lorangal shouted to the blue-tinted holographic image of a seated Tenel Ka.

The Queen Mother did not even bother to hide her annoyance with the Ducha who would dare disrespect her like that from the comforts of her homeworld of Andalia; or rather, in her private cabin in her Battle Dragon _Scarlet Vengeance_ in orbit over Andalia.

"Ducha Lorangal," the taxed Queen Mother replied, "you are not the first Ducha to file a complaint about the missing rapists, and I doubt that you will be the last. All that I am able to tell you is that my forces are investigating the greater part of the galaxy as we speak for Dev'lia and all of his associates."

"That. Is. Not. Good enough," Lorangal emphasized angrily. "I would do better to find those rapist pigs than you, Your Majesty!" She addressed the Queen Mother's title as if it were a curse.

All traces of annoyance on Tenel Ka's expression vanished to be replaced by stern authority. "You are not to launch any vigilante campaign of your own for these sex criminals, Ducha Lorangal."

"Why?" Lorangal asked angrily. "I am offering my support! Why would you be turning down support when you know better than most how precious loyalty is in the Consortium?!"

"Because you and the House of Lorangal have not demonstrated that level of trust, Ducha," Tenel Ka replied sharply. "I know that for whatever reasons you wish to go after these rapists - namely for revenge - it will be for your own personal reasons, and not for the betterment of the Consortium or the galaxy at large. I cannot take the risk that you might make decisions that would be harmful, directly or otherwise, in this search. And I know that when it comes to you, who has made a high number of assassination attempts on my life, is not one to be trusted."

"What makes you think I put any assassination attempts on you?" Lorangal asked.

"I interrogate them myself through Force-persuasion," Tenel Ka said. "They tell me everything I need to know before I let them crunch those cyanide tablets that they keep in their molars. Now, of course, I could just come after you for your treachery, but if I were to do that to every Ducha who put out attempts on me, Lorangal, I would not have much of a Consortium to rule at all." There was some dry humor in Tenel Ka's tone that was just as abruptly wiped away when she continued with, "But if you violate the order of not going after these rapists, you and whoever supports you in such a manhunt will be hunted down by both loyal Hapan forces and Alliance of the Galaxy forces alike. Do I make myself clear?"

Lorangal stifled gritting her teeth in anger; she did not want to damage her perfectly-filed teeth, for it would not do well for her beauty. But she did have to swallow her pride with an actual gulp and nodded. "Yes, Your Highness," the Ducha responded in a more respectful register, though it was quite false. "I will abstain from any actions not vouched by you."

"That is good to hear," Tenel Ka said. "Now I understand that you lost a dear friend when those rapists disappeared, so I can comprehend your grief, Ducha Lorangal. But once again, the Consortium and the Alliance of the Galaxy are doing everything in our power to find these criminals and bring them to justice. I can assure you of that, and your friend will be avenged. Have a good day." The Queen Mother's holographic form then shut off from the other end.

Lorangal sighed. She thought of Drekana, her childhood friend, everyday since her body was found floating among other Hapan guards in the empty solar system where the other AG-Hapan ships ultimately found them in their search for the captured rapists. Lorangal always appreciated how Drekana always took her frustrations out on others, particularly males, by smacking them in the heads with blunt instruments; the last time that Lorangal heard - back when Drekana was alive, of course - her friend had been silencing stupid, uncooperative prisoners by smacking them among their heads with the butt of her rifle. Lorangal smiled at that thought; she hoped Drekana managed to smack one of those rapists across the head with her blaster before she died from the vacuum of space.

And it was in Drekana's memory that Lorangal deigned to even contact that false Jedi Queen Mother for permission to after that Dev'lia and all of his rapist friends; while Loranagal had no love for Tenel Ka, Drekana had a deep respect for the Queen Mother because of her Dathomiri warrior ways. It was for that reason alone that Lorangal would have dared to contact that pretender to the throne in the first place.

But since Tenel Ka would not accept her help, Lorangal and her allies would just have to go after Dev'lia and his associates; and if the cost of it was a place in the Hapes Consortium, and a spot on both the Consortium and the Alliance of the Galaxy's most wanted lists, then so be it.

Tuning her holographic frequency to one of her fleet commanders, Lorangal said, "Commander Yerlof, the Queen Mother will not accept our support. We will have to take matters into our own hands after all."

"Understood, Ducha Lorangal," Yerlof replied stoically. "I will let the rest of the fleet know."

Lorangal then shut the transmission off and sat down in her cabin's plush chair. She then watched the pinpricks of stars in her room's viewport quickly stretch out to be white lines as the _Scarlet Vengeance_, and the fleet accompanying her, launched into hyperspace.


	5. Chapter 5

In the midst of the uncharted space of the Unknown Regions, the _Faux Harla_ - the YT-2400 imported from Corellia to Csilla - streaked through hyperspace on her owner's most recent mission.

The owner, Jedi Knight Jaina Solo Fel, seated in the _Harla_'s pilot seat, heard her husband's irritated sigh from the copilot's chair.

She looked over at Jag. "Still bummed out that we're doing this, honey?"

Jagged Fel looked over at his wife. "Remind me again why you decided to accept this assignment from your brother? You could've just said no, and we could've had our first anniversary in peace. It's not like you're the only other Jedi in the galaxy."

Jaina grinned wryly, just as her father was known to do, before she reached over and patted Jag's hand with her own. "But I am the only one around in the Unknown Regions. And while Jacen could've easily sent someone else, you know as well as me that it would have been irresponsible for me to pass up this assignment, even if it is our first anniversary."

Jag grimaced. "Yeah, I know."

Jaina then retracted her hand from Jag's, but retained her grin. "Besides, what better way to spend our first anniversary hunting down sex criminals? I've been itching for some action lately."

"I just hope you don't end up with another... well, you know..."

Jaina's grin disappeared. She remembered how she handled Shawnkyr Nurudo's death over a year earlier; they had become good friends, just as Shawnkyr and Jag had become good friends. But when Shawnkyr died while she, Jaina, and a few other of their fellow fighter pilots engaged some pirates, something in Jaina had broken open to remind her of all the people that she had lost during the Yuuzhan Vong War, and Jaina herself broke down from post-traumatic stress disorder.

But not long after Jaina's breakdown, Jacen had returned from his six-year sojourn throughout the galaxy to help Jaina cope with her trauma. And together (and with the help of the soon-to-be-treacherous Garis Boric, as much as Jaina was pained to admit), Jacen and Jaina had renewed their twin bond as they shared each other's pain, made the other's pain their own, and both had emerged that much stronger for it. For that alone, Jaina was willing to do what Jacen asked of her, more so than any desire for action out in the Unknown Regions.

Jaina shook her head in response to her husband's remark. "It won't happen again. And even if it does, I know Jacen will be there to help me through it. That's what our twin bond is there for, Jag."

Before Jag could respond, the _Faux Harla_'s chronometer beeped, drawing the Fels' attention to the fact that the ship was going to drop out of hyperspace soon for a routine recalculation. Wife and husband worked the controls of the former's vessel as they prepared the _Harla_ for dropout.

And when it eventually occurred, the _Harla_ ended up right before a _Dreadnaught_-class heavy cruiser.

The Fels stared ahead at the cruiser, which had its right flank facing the _Harla_, for a few moments before Jaina asked, "Jag, do you know if that Dreadnaught is supposed to be out here in this part of space?"

"Last I checked with my dad," Jag answered, "no; the Ascendancy hasn't expanded its borders here, and it sure doesn't look like a Chiss craft anyway."

"That's what I thought," Jaina muttered.

And just as Jaina said that, the _Harla_'s comm crackled to life for her owner to answer. "This is Captain Jaina Solo Fel of the _Faux Harla_," she said before anyone on the other end could say anything. "Please identify yourself."

"Captain Fel." The voice on the other end sounded very coarse and rough, but not like a Bothan's, but more like a human who severely needed some cough drops at least. "Would you at all be related to Han Solo, by any chance?"

Jaina made sure that any annoyance in her tone wasn't carried through; even after all her exploits in the Yuuzhan Vong War, she was still kind of irritated that she was still overshadowed by Han's reputation to some degree.

"He's my father," Jaina responded curtly.

"Well, then, you wouldn't mind allowing some smugglers to go on with their day after a routine checkup?"

"Just because my dad did it, doesn't mean you or anyone else should."

"If that's the case..." The voice on the other end deliberately trailed off as the line went dead.

Without any hesitation, Jaina threw the _Faux Harla_ to port as laser banks from the Dreadnaught fired at the YT-2400. As the lasers continued to chase the _Harla_ through space, Jaina performed several more maneuvers that would make her dad proud as always; and Jaina had no doubt that Han would be even more proud of her for her recklessness as she flew the _Harla_ for the opening of the Dreadnaught's hangar bay.

In the meantime, Jag had already rushed to the back of the ship to man the top gun turret and triggered it to fire away at the stationary Dreadnaught, weakening its shields at a specific point and always recalibrating his aim for all the maneuvers that his wife put the _Harla_ through.

"Honey!" Jaina's voice called from the cockpit. "My sensors are telling me that the Dreadnaught's about to go into hyperspace!"

"Don't worry, Jaina, I'm almost there!" Jag called back.

And only a few seconds later, Jag's lasers penetrated the targeted area of the Dreadnaught's shields to blow up the generator itself. Just like that, the entirety of the ship's energy-based defenses vanished in an instant, and Jag quickly shifted aim for the opposing ship's hyperdrive generator. A few more hits, and the sublight generator was nothing but smoke that trailed off into the vacuum of space, leaving the Dreadnaught a sitting duck.

A sitting duck that could still fire upon the _Faux Harla_, but since the Dreadnaught couldn't hit the smaller ship with all of its laser banks, it didn't make much of a difference in the long-run.

Less than a quarter of a minute later, the _Harla_ zoomed through the opening of the Dreadnaught's hangar bay, which was empty for all but a few ships that lacked any real defensive weapons.

_Well, that explains why they didn't send any fighters out_, Jaina thought as she slowed the _Harla_ down to a reasonable speed and gently set her down to the hangar's deck before cycling her engines off.

But just as the ship had completed her shutdown cycle, one of the doors in the hangar bay leading to the rest of the Dreadnaught opened up, and a score of men of various species - which included humans - rushed in carrying holdout blasters and military-grade rifles.

"Well, here goes nothing," Jaina said sardonically as she saw the men through the _Harla_'s forward viewport. She unhooked her lightsaber from her utility belt and headed to the back of her ship.

Once Jag joined her from the top gun turret, Jaina lowered the _Harla_'s landing ramp while simultaneously activating her violet-bladed lightsaber. Before the ramp had touched the deck, Jaina had already jumped out, turned in the direction of the approaching men, and began deflecting blasterfire back to the firers while Jag leaned over from the top of the ramp and fired his own blaster at the attackers.

Within the span of about half a minute, the men were all but laying on the deck, out of commission from either death or injuries that made them moan in blissful agony.

From there, Jag followed Jaina toward one of the downed men, a light-skinned fellow who was clutching painfully at his cauterized shoulder wound. Jaina lifted the man with her free hand by his collar and authoritatively asked, "Where's the bridge of the ship?" For added effectiveness, she put the power of the Force behind her words, and sure enough, this thug was weak-minded enough to be that compliant even in the midst of his pain.

"Three levels up," the man said in a drone-like voice that was nevertheless tinged with pain from his wound. "The sixth door to your right as you head straight for the hallway."

"Thanks," Jaina said before releasing her victim's collar and walked past him and his fellow downed smugglers to the door from which they came, with Jag following suit.

As the Fels proceeded down the hallway, they encountered about five more smugglers, who tried to shoot at them, but with deft swings of her lightsaber, Jaina was able to kill every one of them by deflecting their shots right back into their faces or bodies. Otherwise, nothing else interfered with their progress as they headed for the turbolift ahead.

"How much do you wanna bet that they're gonna try to kill us by dropping the elevator while we're in it?" Jag retorted.

Jaina spared him a sly look before continuing on her way to the doors up ahead. She sliced them down, peered down, and she saw the turbolift rushing up from one of the lower levels. With her free hand, she reached out and projected the Force to stop the turbolift in its tracks, jamming it so that it was stuck about five levels below.

"Okay, so how are we going to get to the bridge?" Jag asked his wife. He looked around briefly. "I don't see any emergency stairs around."

Jaina then turned to her husband and reached out to seize him through the Force before levitating his startled form up to the turbolift exit three levels above. She deposited him there on the inches-thick ledge, and he held onto the door's frame for dear life while his wife Force-leaped thrice upward before, while in midair, using her telekinetic abilities to blow the door open.

And from there, Jag was able to safely walk inside while Jaina soared over him to land in a graceful roll before bounding up from a graceful crouch.

No one was out in this corridor, so Jaina and Jag proceeded toward the sixth door to their right, as Jaina's Force-influenced victim had told her, before Jaina slashed at the door with her lightsaber.

And her danger sense alerted her too late.

Upon the tip of her blade touching the door, it exploded, throwing her back so that she hit the wall behind her and fell to the deck unconscious.

"Jaina!" Jag exclaimed.

From the smoke of the blown-up door, a lithe, red-skinned male Zabrak dressed all in black emerged to face Jag. With a vibroblade in each hand, he rushed toward the male Fel.

The latter fired off a few shots for the Zabrak, but the alien managed to bound from side to side quicker than Jag could fire his shots until he reached the male Fel to slash one of the blades through the barrel of his blaster.

And with the other blade, the Zabrak thrust it into Jag's right rib cage.

Jag seized up from the intense, searing pain in his side, and the pain intensified further as the alien managed to yank the vibroblade out of Jag's ribs. Jag then collapsed to his knees, his right hand instinctively reaching to vainly staunch the flow of blood that now stained his tunic.

The Zabrak then raised his blood-stained vibroblade up beneath Jag's jaw so that the human was looking straight into his jaundice-like eyes.

"The only reason that both you and your wife continue to live," the Zabrak intoned in a low, bass voice, "is because my employers are interested in the two of you."

Without another word, the Zabrak, Lasaunge, holstered his vibroblades and punched a fist across Jag's face, efficiently knocking him out.

Sometime later, after both of the Fels were tied up with the flexible titanium cables that Lasaunge had been provided with for this occasion, the Zabrak returned to the Dreadnaught's bridge, which had been cleared of smoke from the explosion. The mildly-frightened crew there, including the Rodian captain, were all waiting and staring curiously at the two bound humans out in the corridor.

"Are you sure that the cable will hold the woman?" the captain asked Lasaunge. "She is a Jedi, after all. The man, sure, but-"

Lasaunge swiftly held up a hand to halt the Rodian's train of thought. "It will do; that cable has also been programmed to seep sleeping chemicals into their bodies, even through the fabric of their clothes. Neither of them will be a threat to us for the duration of the trip back."

"Well, okay then," the Rodian replied uncertainly. "And I also have your word that your boss will compensate me for the damage to my ship and the crew that I've lost to these two?"

Lasaunge nodded. "You will be appropriately compensated by Begranda the Grand, Captain. Do you have any further inquiries?"

The captain shook his head. "No, I don't."

Without saying anymore, Lasaunge turned and headed out through the destroyed exit of the bridge.

"Well, you have a good day, too, sir," the Rodian said sardonically to Lasaunge's retreating form.

Outside, Lasaunge picked up both of Jaina and Jag's perpetually-sleeping bodies and headed down the left of the corridor. Three doors later, he turned to his right and pressed a button that opened the door.

There, the Zabrak deposited the sleeping Jaina carefully onto the metal dais inside the dimly-lit room before closing the door on the woman. He then pressed the next button that lowered the dais inside down toward the crowd of scared women who were of different races and species. Once the dais reached the floor before the frightened women, one of the two guards who was stationed here - a brown-skinned human male who was partnered with a Barabel who was as mean as he looked - grabbed Jaina by her shoulder and dragged her off the dais, which allowed it to automatically return it to its position to the door a few meters above.

Meanwhile, Lasaunge turned to the door parallel to the one he deposited Jaina in and opened that one to lower Jag's form on the dais waiting there. After closing the door on Jag, the Zabrak pressed the button that lowered Jag's form to a group of weary-looking men of various races and species. The guards there, two fair-skinned Hapan females, watched Jag head on down, and one of them managed to drag Jag's form off, just as the man in the other room did with Jaina.


	6. Chapter 6

Jacen snapped awake from the sudden, horrible sensation that told him that Jaina had just been hurt.

Beside him, his wife, Danni Quee Solo, had also awakened and said, "Lights." Their bedroom then lit up, and Danni sat up to place a hand on her husband's shoulder in concern. "Jacen, what's wrong?"

"It's Jaina," he said in worry. "Something's happened to her."

Danni's eyes widened in fear. "Is she-"

"No, no, the sensation wasn't that powerful," Jacen said. "But right now, my twin bond to her is incredibly fuzzy; I think she might be in a coma or something like that." He then looked directly into his wife's eyes. "I'm gonna have to go out there and save her myself, Danni."

"You?" Danni asked, still concerned. "Why can't you just send someone else to find her? I mean, Nelani can-"

Jacen waved his wife from completing that sentence. "I have to do this myself, honey. I'm the one who has the best chance at finding her with our twin bond."

"But what about your responsibilities to the Order?" Danni asked. "What about your responsibilities to Miko and I?"

Jacen grimaced. Miko, his and Danni's son - named after the late Jedi Knight Miko Reglia, who sacrificed his life so at the beginning of the Yuuzhan Vong War so that Jacen and Danni could escape the Vong-held world of Helska 4 - was barely a year old now, and didn't even see his father all that often even as a Jedi student in the confines of the modest Jedi Temple. And after Danni had given up her studies of Zonama Sekot so that she and Miko could be with Jacen, combined with the fact that Jacen really did have a lot on his plate in managing the Jedi Order, and he could see how he didn't have that much of a case in going after Jaina himself.

"Look, I'm sure that the other Masters can handle things right now," Jacen said. "At least for a little while, anyway, even with Tenel Ka informing me about that crazy Ducha Lorangal going vigilante out there for those sex criminals. I mean, Kenth Hamner's a good bureaucrat; if anything, I sometimes consider making him the Grand Master of the Order." His tone was half-joking; at times, sifting through datapads of information was something that strained even Jacen's patience.

"But your uncle didn't make Master Hamner the leader of the Order, Jacen," Danni pointed out. "He made you that leader."

Jacen sighed. It still pained him that Uncle Luke put this burden of leading the Jedi Order upon him bare moments before he died back on Korriban nearly a year before; as much as he was glad that he could organize the Order the way he wanted - so that if there were any repeats of fallen Jedi such as Garis Boric in the future, they would be few and far between - Jacen still felt somewhat overwhelmed with the responsibilities that the title of Grand Master conferred unto him. And that was especially so since he spent very little time with little Miko and even less time doing some soul-searching, as he once did during his post-Vong War sojourn throughout the galaxy all those years ago.

But it was evident from her tone that Danni wasn't concerned for Jacen's responsibilities to the Order as she was in seeing him again; ever since he became Grand Master of the Order, he had personally encountered no threats in the galaxy, and that made things easier for Danni to be with Jacen, knowing that he wasn't going out in the galaxy to fight the threat of the decade as he did when he was during the Yuuzhan Vong War and the times following his sojourn to the Battle of Korriban. Now that he was about to go back out into the galaxy to face a new threat that endangers Jaina's life, that certainty was gone for Danni, and she wasn't sure if she would see the man she loved again.

"Look, Danni," Jacen said, "I know full well my responsibilities, to you, Miko, and the Jedi Order. But Jaina's in trouble, and you know as well as I do that I won't be able to run the Order all that well unless I know for sure, firsthand, that she's safe. So, I'm sorry, my dear, but I'm gonna have to go on a leave of absence to find my sister."

Danni's frown lowered just a little bit, but she nodded in understanding. "Take care of yourself then."

Jacen smiled. Danni had always been very supportive of his decisions; even when he had considered not being with her when she told him that she was pregnant with his child, Danni never dissuaded him, even if she felt torn-up about it.

"I will," he said to her. "I love you, you know."

Danni's frown became a smile, and she leaned forward to reciprocate the kiss that he wanted to give her. It lasted for several moments before Jacen had to inevitably pull away; by that point, though, neither of them were smiling anymore, because in the first time in a long while, since Jacen had been given the title of Grand Master, he was about to fight again.

"I love you, too," Danni said. "Remember that."

Jacen nodded. "I will."

And with no further words, Jacen got up, dressed into his signature Jedi robes, and walked out of the room, leaving Danni completely alone and sleepless.

Now in the rest of the dorm that he, Danni, and Miko lived in, Jacen decided to stop by at his son's room. There, he carefully opened the door so as not to awaken the sleeping toddler, and just as cautiously approached the crib that Miko was starting to outgrow.

The darkness in Miko's room was offset enough by the dim light from the glow-in-the-dark starship toys that hung over the crib on strings set against the ceiling. So Jacen took a few moments to admire his slumbering child before leaning down and kissing Miko on the forehead. He then straightened back up with resolution, turned, and headed back out the door, quiet as ever even as he shut the nursery door behind him.

Following his departure from the dorm itself, Jacen headed down the corridor to his office, where he sat down in his desk and, from the desk's inset commlink, activated one of the Jedi Master's comm units.

"Hello?" the elderly, masculine - and quite tired - voice on the other end eventually.

"Master Hamner, I know it's a bit early in the morning, but could you please come to my office?" Jacen asked.

"Of course, Master Solo," Hamner replied evenly, stifling any further yawns from his voice. "I'll be on my way shortly."

Ten minutes later, Jedi Master Kenth Hamner finally arrived in Jacen's office, his robes pressed and his appearance otherwise clean-cut.

_Impressive_, Jacen thought. _I can even smell his freshly-minted breath from here. This is definitely someone I'd leave to govern the Order_.

"Please, have a seat, Master Hamner," Jacen said.

Once Hamner was seated, Jacen, right to the point, asked the subordinate Master, "How would you feel about running the Jedi Order while I'm gone?"

Whatever traces of sleep in Hamner's visage instantly disappeared as his eyes widened in surprise. "I beg your pardon, Master Solo?"

"My sister is in trouble, Master Hamner," Jacen said, his tone completely serious. "And I know for a fact that I'm the one who is most likely to find her. Now before you go on telling me that I have responsibilities to the Order, and that I can't simply abandon them just for a family member, first, my wife Danni already gave me that lecture, and second of all, this is only temporary. And since I find you to be the most reliable Jedi Master to run the Order in my upcoming absence, I feel that you would be a good acting Grand Master, especially since you did a good job running the Order while I was off with my uncle finding Zonama Sekot during the Yuuzhan Vong War.

"So, Master Hamner, will you agree to fill my place while I'm off saving my sister?"

"Yes, Master Solo, I agree to be the acting Grand Master of the Jedi Order," Hamner said simply.

Jacen's brow was raised. "Really? That easily?"

Hamner nodded. "Of course. As you said, you are the one most likely to save your sister, what with your twin bond. With that in mind, I would gladly take your place while you are gone, Master Solo."

"Oh," Jacen said, slightly stunned. "Well, in that case, Master Hamner, I formally confer my duties upon you for the time being of my absence from Denon."

"Thank you, Master Solo, I will not let you down," Hamner said.

"But before I go," Jacen said, "I'll have to leave a message for the rest of the Order so that they'll recognize your authority for the time being."

Hamner nodded. "You do what you have to, Master Solo," he said as Jacen activated his inset commlink and set it to record for the next day.


	7. Chapter 7

As she awoke with the sensation of groggy limbs that felt like they hadn't been used in days, Jaina's vision transitioned from darkness, then to a blur, and then finally back to her full sight. However, the site of a red-furred Bothan leering down upon with her with an expression of lust immediately put her on edge.

Yet, for all that her instincts said that she needed to get away from this perverted being, her weighty limbs protested, for she had no control over her motor functions at the moment. That, and the fact that she couldn't feel the Force only exacerbated the situation.

"My, my, are you quite a catch, Jedi Solo." The Bothan practically purred his words in sensual delight. He then rubbed his hands together, as if in anticipation of something. "Oh, how I can't wait to see you on the stage." He then spread his arms out to either side, as if he were holding up a screen of some sort. "Yes, I can see it already; you and that lightsaber of yours, swinging, twirling it around on stage, just as you have no doubt accomplished in combat; and all the while, you cut the saber across your clothes, and bit by bit, your clothes will be tatters on the deck of the stage until your full, naked beauty is seen on stage... as you begin sucking the milk out of the blade end of your lightsaber."

Even in spite of her paralysis, Jaina still managed to make a face of utter disgust and confusion at the pervert leering above her.

"Oh, that's right, I'm sorry, where are my manners?" the Bothan retorted. "My name is Dev'lia, and you're going to be the latest dancer in the reopened Dev'lia's Dirties. As you can see, you are in my office, and the gentlemen who brought you in were kind enough to place you on my desk. You may speak now."

"Dev'lia?" Jaina said, more against her own will, she felt. "You're the sex fiend who was arrested with all your pervert friends."

Dev'lia looked back down at Jaina with a look of mock hurt. "Now, now, I wouldn't exactly call myself a sex fiend; granted, some of my friends can be called that, because what they like to do with their women, ooh..." He trailed off and looked away from Jaina as he was no doubt thinking about what his friends did with the women they had. Dev'lia then looked back down at Jaina and resumed with, "Even I think it's fiendish." His tone didn't carry any disgust so much as envy, Jaina thought.

"What makes you think I'd be so willing to be one of your dancers, you slime scum?" Jaina asked angrily, ignoring his previous statement.

"Whoever said you'd be willing?" Dev'lia asked. "With you, I quite understand that someone of your... gender-friendly persuasion, let's say, wouldn't be swayed to be part of my club."

Horror dawned on Jaina's face as she realized her situation; she was going to be enslaved into this dirty practice. Well, as soon as whatever was paralyzing her had run its course...

"Oh, and if you think that the stuff I just injected you with is simply going to run its course, my dear," Dev'lia said, "think again." At the same time as he said those last two words, Jaina felt a sharp sting in the left side of her neck.

"So long as I give you this drug every twelve hours or so," Dev'lia continued, "you won't be able to do anything I don't tell you. Do you understand that?"

"Yes," Jaina found herself answering against her will.

Dev'lia's vicious smile was renewed. "Very good. And to satisfy your curiosity as to why you can't access the Force, that drug I gave you not only nullifies your will to do anything, but it's also been infused with ysalamiri DNA; you know, from the animals from Myrkr that cancel out your Force abilities." Dev'lia then smacked his free hand over his mouth, as if in shame of something he said, when it was clear to Jaina that he was about to lead into a joke of some kind.

"Oh, that's right," Dev'lia said, "I understand that the mention of Myrkr would be quite a touchy subject for you, wouldn't it?" He then trailed off with a chuckle, and Jaina was unable to so much as grit her teeth in anger at his allusion to the horrifying events that took place over Myrkr during the Yuuzhan Vong all those years ago.

He then leaned down closer to her so that his snout nearly caressed her cheek; again, Jaina was unable to shiver in disgust at the perverted Bothan's obvious arousal for her.

"Well, guess what, darling," he said as he trailed a hand over her stomach. Once more, he left his sentence at that before abruptly, and violently, ripping her Jedi tunic away with the claws that suddenly retracted from his fingers, exposing Jaina's torso that was otherwise covered by her bra. A second later, that, too, was stripped away, leaving the upper half of Jaina's body bare for Dev'lia to literally salivate over for a moment, while simultaneously rubbing both hands across her breasts and stomach, before he finally looked back into her terrified eyes.

"You're gonna find that things will get very touchy around here," he said in a pseudo-seductive whisper.

Without anymore words, he went back to work as he tore his claws through the belt at Jaina's pants before ripping her trousers away. Following the subsequent peeling-away of her underwear, the last article of clothing separating Jaina's nakedness from Dev'lia's one-sided pleasure, he unzipped his pants and mounted her form before thrusting his hard, hairy phallic inside her. From there, he thrust into her over and over again while grunting from the physical exertion that he was placing his energy into, as he was raping Jaina so hard that his desk was straining to break beneath Jaina.

As Jaina lay there, unable to even utter a whimper as she was being violated like this, she thought of the only thing that didn't make her completely despair as this disgusting being hurt her irrevocably; amidst her helplessness in the situation, amidst her severed connection from the Force, and even amongst the absence of the man she loved and was married to, Jag, and wondering where he was and worrying about where he was and what had happened to him as this was all happening, Jaina knew that somehow, someday, Jacen would come for her. She didn't know how, what with his duties as the Grand Master, but she felt as if her twin bond with him, as nonexistent as it apparently was now that she couldn't access the Force, was telling her that she would be saved from this by Jacen.

And then, whether or not it was ethical, Jaina would make Dev'lia pay for doing this to her and everything else that he would do to her in the foreseeable future.

.

When Jag woke up, he found himself with his wrists and ankles bound by steel chains to the frame of a plush bed. He saw that his surroundings were adorned with Hapan furniture and architecture, and at the foot of the bed, a middle-aged, dark-haired Hapan woman - whose beauty was unspoiled by age - stood there completely naked, leering down at the similarly nude Jag.

In spite of the woman's beauty, Jag was nevertheless horrified; especially since he recognized this woman from the HoloNet as the vigilante Hapan Ducha Lorangal.

"My, my, are you quite a catch," the treacherous Ducha said.

She then leaped onto the bed and began pulling at Jag's phallic, gradually hardening it until it was suitable enough for Lorangal to start mounting the now-crying Jag.


	8. Chapter 8

"I am sorry, Ducha Tragon," Tenel Ka stated to the bemused-looking woman shimmering from the holographic emitter, "but even if there was any progress on the hunt for these sex criminals, I am afraid that I would be unable to share them with you as-"

"Unable to share them with me?" interrupted the distant Ducha Tragon of the Algnadesh system. "You are the Queen Mother of the Hapes Consortium! There is nothing that you cannot do within the boundaries of the Transitory Mists! What kind of Queen Mother are you where you undermine even your own authority?!"

_I can send a small fleet over to your home system right now and have you executed just for sniffing your nose at me_, Tenel Ka wanted to say, _never mind this unabashed insolence_.

However, the Queen Mother reminded herself, if she were to do anything like that, she could only imagine the kind of uprising that may come about from all the Duchas who, at this moment, are just itching for an excuse to go to full-blown civil war with her. So, instead, Tenel Ka civilly replied with, "I am perfectly aware of my authority, Ducha Tragon. Nevertheless, as a matter of interplanetary security, I cannot reveal any military secrets to any one Ducha just to satisfy her curiosity; and you are not the first one to do this just today."

Tragon's expression became somehow more insolent. "No wonder Ducha Lorangal turned her back on the Consortium like that to hunt down those sex criminals; if you are unable to fully place your trust in your own Duchas, why should we ever trust you?"

It took all of the Queen Mother's willpower at that moment to not blow up at Tragon. Because, right now, in Tenel Ka's mind, this Ducha represented everything that was wrong with Hapan politics; when there was an able leader who was able to keep everything she could stable, there was always at least one person who would stir things up in the Consortium just so she could have a seat on the throne. And when the ruling Queen Mother was barely able to hold things together, if at all, the Duchas would place the blame of the problems squarely on that Queen Mother's shoulders and decry her as an unworthy ruler. There was no winning in the Hapes Consortium.

If only Tenel Ka could return to the simplicity of living a relatively wild life on Dathomir, or even the furnished hallways of the now-destroyed Jedi praxeum on Yavin 4...

Back when she was with Jacen.

Thankfully for the Queen Mother, Ducha Tragon was not expecting a reply; the holo-woman simply stared back at Tenel Ka for a moment before signing off from the other end.

The dark-skinned holocam operator who held the hovercart with the cam on it before the Queen Mother looked over at Her Majesty and hesitantly asked, "Would you like me to call Ducha Tragon back, Your Highness?"

Tenel Ka gave a dismissive wave. "Forget it, Chacol. Leave me be. I am done for the day, and if anymore Duchas want to contact me simply to get progress on the hunt for the sex criminals, you can take them yourself. Unless it is a legitimately urgent matter that any of them wish to bring to my attention, I would rather not have my time wasted by those hypocritical wind-bags."

"As you wish, Your Majesty," Chacol replied ceremoniously before turning with the hovercart and moving to the exit of the throne room.

But just as the holocam operator was halfway toward the exit, there was a beep on the transceiver, and she stopped to see where the transmission was coming from. Chacol turned back just as Tenel Ka was standing up from her throne.

"Your Highness, I beg your pardon," the holocam operator said, "but this transmission is coming from Denon."

There was a moment of hesitation, and Tenel Ka sat back on her throne. "Bring the holocam back over and activate it then."

Chacol nodded and did as her Queen Mother instructed.

And once the hologram was activated, a slight smile rose at the corners of Tenel Ka's mouth.

"Grand Master Solo," the Queen Mother replied, "to what do I offer you this call?"

"Due notice, Your Majesty," Jacen said. "I've already informed Chief of State Omas about this, so I thought it fair to do the same with you; I will be absent from Denon for some time and will be unavailable for questions regarding the search for the sex criminals or the now-suspended talks about uniting the AG and the Consortium."

"May I ask why?"

"It actually has something to do with the hunt for the criminals," Jacen elaborated. "Or at least I have probable grounds to believe it does. Whether this leads back to Dev'lia and his associates or not, either way, the acting Grand Master in my stead will be Master Kenth Hamner."

"Thank you for informing me about this, Master Solo," Tenel Ka said. "But may I also inquire as to where exactly you are going?"

"The Unknown Regions, Your Highness," Jacen answered. "That's all I can tell you."

"Thank you for letting me know, Master Solo," Tenel Ka said. "May the Force be with you."

Jacen smiled and offered a respectful nod. "And with you, Your Highness." And with that, the connection was shut off from the other end.

When the Queen Mother said nothing more and began to stand up, Chacol took that as her cue to turn around and make the rest of her way out of the throne room.

In the meantime, Tenel Ka retired to her lavish bedchambers, where she undressed and fell asleep, where she hoped to have peaceful dreams about herself and Jacen together...

But just as she was about to surrender to her slumber, her eyes snapped wide open again, and she sat up with a look of determination on her face.

The next morning, when one of the Hapan palace guards had to use an emergency keycode to unlock the Queen Mother's bedchambers to find out why she had not awakened for her scheduled breakfast, that guard and her colleagues searched the quarters to find no sign of their Jedi ruler.

A search was thus carried throughout the corridors and rooms of the Fountain Palace, looking for any traces or clues of Tenel Ka's whereabouts. Naturally, one of the first avenues that the royal guard looked through were security footage, but for some strange and mysterious reason, all of the palace holocams had been rendered useless between the time when the Queen Mother had went to bed and the hours before breakfast was scheduled to take place.

Of course, it would be a long while before any of the guards could come to the conclusion that their own Queen Mother had used a Force-trick to wipe out the memories of the holocams, just as a Jedi such as herself would be able to mind-trick a weak-minded individual.

As for Tenel Ka herself, she was already in the streets of the city of Ta'a Chume'Dan, disguised as one of the lower-class locals; with some makeup that had dulled her features from the beauty that she was known for, combined with dirtying the regal clothes from her closet the night before, Queen Mother Tenel Ka Djo had all but successfully blended into the background of downtown Ta'a Chume'Dan. Now all that was left was to try to find a way to get off Hapes, and out of the Consortium, without attracting attention.

Let Hapes and the rest of its Consortium fall into absolute chaos in her absence, if worse came to worse. Tenel Ka had enough of dealing with all the treachery and petty grabs for power by the Duchas and the bureaucracy of the politics; if any of those other Duchas want the throne, let them have it.

Tenel Ka had taken the throne out of the need for the Consortium to fight back against the Yuuzhan Vong so many years before. And since that need had been long past, why should she dedicate anymore of her precious time to something that she had never wanted to become in the first place?

She had to desperately make up for lost time, for all the time that she was never able to see her friends after the war; and that was by reuniting with Jacen, to start.


	9. Chapter 9

Slowly, sensually, Jaina swayed her body in front of the crowd of the horny patrons of Dev'lia's Dirties, slashing away the clothes on her form with calculated movements from the fake, purple-bladed lightsaber. Of course, the pieces of clothing only had minimal contact with the false blade, if any; the shreds had been timed to tear away and flutter along the raised stage as Jaina's dance continued against her will.

And she couldn't even wince in disgust as she watched some patrons unzip their pants and begin pulling on their hardened penises as she continued to get naked; had she shown that kind of emotion, it would take away from the sensuality of the performance, as Dev'lia told her, and it would "put the audience off" instead of "getting them off."

And if she didn't do as he said, he would kill her with the bomb implanted in her heart, placed there just the day before via an injection gun from Dev'lia. He told her that he did that so he wouldn't have to rely on the body-controlling drug, although he would still give her regular treatments of ysalamiri-laced chemicals so she wouldn't be able to access the Force.

By the time Jaina's dance was finally done, and her waxed vulva had been all but exposed to the crowd, sections of the bar floor, along with a few tabletops, had been stained with the semen of various members of different species. With one final movement for the crowd, Jaina bowed as if she were a showman with considerably more dignity and clothes, and the curtain over the stage lowered.

For a moment, without the Force to tell her anything that her other senses couldn't tell her,Jaina thought that she was alone until she felt a furry hand rest itself on her right shoulder. She jumped, startled, and turned to find Dev'lia standing right there with that seditious grin of his.

"Very good, Jaina," Dev'lia whispered sensually in her ear as he slithered his hand down her arm. "Very good. Had I actually been paying you like the others, I would have given you a bonus."

He then smacked her hard on her butt cheek and waved to the right side of the stage. "Back to your cell; we gotta get ready for the next act. I hope Leanna will deliver as she had yesterday," he continued more to himself than the enslaved Jaina, his tone dripping with lust for the dancer Leanna.

With one glance on the cylindrical device in Dev'lia's occupied hand, the top button held down as a dead man's switch that Jaina knew could only be deactivated by the bottom button, she knew she had no other choice but to listen to Dev'lia's orders and head to the exit of the stage; had she simply jumped on him, she would have no doubt knocked the detonator out of his hand and triggered the bomb in her heart.

After passing through the threshold, she walked through the dancers' lounge where the other dancers were sitting around on semi-comfortable seats and chatting in the scant clothes that they were allowed to wear on their downtime. Jaina couldn't help but notice that they looked like they either didn't have anything more to live for, or they looked traumatized and scared; for them, this wasn't a simple part-time job, like working at a fast food eatery or anything along those lines, where when they were on break, they could just take a load off, because Dev'lia and the bar's patrons were liable to come right into the lounge and rape every single one of them in a gang-bang of gang-bangs, and there wasn't a single thing the dancers could do about it. Hence, not a single one of the dancers wore expressions of boredom or casualness, but more alertness and fear.

Jaina couldn't blame any of them.

The dancers whose wills had been all but broken didn't even acknowledge Jaina's naked presence; they kept to themselves as if she were never there, for they were scared that she was even here. But Jaina had overheard some of their conversations in her cell over the past several days, and she could hear when they occasionally talk about her; they all knew who she was as a Jedi Knight, and they said things like, "If Devvy could do that to _Iaina Solo_, what chance do we have of getting outta here?" or "We could only dream that she'll take a chain and wrap it around that bastard's throat like her mom with Jabba the Hutt" or "Let's hope none of us end up like her; I like to have _some _freedom and even a meager paycheck."

Jaina didn't want to talk to any of them; even if Dev'lia was lenient and decided not to let his finger slip off the dead man's switch in seeing that she disobeyed his direct order for not returning back to her cell because she wanted to socialize, Jaina was simply uninterested and wanted to be left alone.

She reached the end of the lounge where the door to her cell was. She unlocked it, walked inside, closed it behind her, and the door automatically locked itself.

And it was only then that Jaina broke down sobbing, and slouched down to her bare haunches on the cold, unpadded floor, uncaring of the thin cushioning of her bed just across the cell that would provide only slightly more comfort. She braced her knees up against her nude form and let her tears stream down her legs until, half an hour later, she fell asleep there.

.

Since chaos could not be afforded in the Hapes Consortium, the Fountain Palace's security kept word of the Queen Mother's disappearance from leaking into the public in the first day; but sooner or later, as everyone in the Palace knew, word would leak once it was found that Tenel Ka had not been fulfilling the duty, forcefully prompting someone to tell the public that Her Highness was gone.

Had Tenel Ka herself actually cared about that, she would have figured that before the week was done, Hapes and the rest of the Consortium would erupt into chaos; people would go crazy and start rioting and looting throughout cities across the sixty-three worlds, the backstabbing Duchas would all vie for power on the empty throne, and whatever chance that the Consortium had with uniting itself with the Alliance of the Galaxy would simply be gone.

As it was, though, Tenel Ka continued to dwell Ta'a Chume'Dan's streets incognito, still wearing the dirtied garments that she took from the Palace before she sneaked out, and the hood she wore concealed her features fairly well. Whenever someone would try to take a closer look, Tenel Ka would wave her one arm to use a mind-trick on such an onlooker, and he or she would instantly forget that their Queen Mother was among their number, stalking the streets amidst the poor and downtrodden of Hapes.

As she continued to lurk through the streets of the city, Tenel Ka could not help but be temporarily broken out of her obsessive drive to leave the planet incognito to observe how the poor had lived. She found many people actually living out on the streets, beggars and would-be robbers of various ages, all of them filthy, hungry, and with appearances that would make the upper class nobles of all worlds throughout the Consortium wretch once they realized that imperfectly-looking Hapans lived with them in the Transitory Mists.

During her lurking, Tenel Ka had a brief moment of turning back and returning to the Fountain Palace to restart her duties, and possibly even begin some kind of program that could help the poor, at least here on Hapes, if not elsewhere in the Transitory Mists.

But that moment was broken with the reminder that any such action would get way more backlash from her upper class subjects than Tenel Ka would be willing to take; it would be all-out war against the Queen Mother by treacherous Duchas who thought it absolutely disgusting that their Jedi queen would dare waste resources helping people who were unable, and most likely unwilling (which they would most likely think), to help themselves. No, if the Consortium was going to go into chaos eventually, Tenel Ka would rather continue on her quest to leave the planet and the Mists behind to be with Jacen again than to return and be responsible for actually doing something that would lead the Consortium into irrevocable chaos. And there was no way she could just go on continuing her duties with the knowledge that she had the ability to help the poor of Hapes but refused to do it; it was against what she felt that she had to do as a Jedi Knight.

On the other hand, Tenel Ka thought, her very abandonment of her duties was going against her personal obligations as a Jedi Knight, and the part in her that told her what Master Skywalker - forget that, what _Jacen_ might say - would tell her to do; because even if they were supportive of her leaving the throne, they would tell her that it was irresponsible to leave it just empty without a suitable replacement and ripe for the taking by corrupt Duchas who would covet power all to themselves.

But Tenel Ka ignored that part of herself - she ignored everything that told her that what she was doing was wrong, that what she was doing was completely irresponsible. Too much of her life by now had been doing something she had never wanted to do in her childhood, which was rule the Hapes Consortium; too much of herself had been sacrificed to helping others who wouldn't care about what happened to her, and she rarely, if ever, got to see those who did care about her, like Jacen, Jaina, or any of their friends and family.

And it was with that in mind that Tenel Ka walked into a building in the upper district of Ta'a Chume'Dan, where the poverty of the city was less pronounced. Here, the abandoning Queen Mother found herself in the sparse office of a private pilot. The red-skinned woman - the only other occupant in the room - sitting behind the desk barely took any notice of the cloaked figure on the other end as the former was smoking a cigarra; the private pilot's expression was one of cynical misery, as if she felt like she had nothing else in life, but kept on going anyway because she thought there might be some way that she could finally make something of her life.

Tenel Ka read that not only in the woman's Force-presence, but it was also laid bare in her external expression. The Queen Mother hoped that her abandonment of the Consortium would do this one person some good.

Once Tenel Ka removed her hood, the private pilot only gave an apathetic glance at her ruler and continued to smoke her cigarra.

"You do not bow before your Queen Mother?" Tenel Ka asked, but without any of the authority that she might otherwise carry in her tone. What with her abandonment of the Consortium, she was simply asking out of plain curiosity.

The red-skinned woman removed the cigarra from her mouth and blew out a big smoke ring. Once it dissipated, she said, "If you have to come in dressed like that, Your Highness, and without a royal escort, I take it you don't wanna be worshiped."

Tenel Ka was silent for a moment; it seemed that through this woman, she felt as if... as if... as if she were being vindicated in her abandonment of the Consortium, as if this woman were telling her, without any words, that it was all right to do this.

"I want you to fly me out of the Transitory Mists," Tenel Ka said, mentally slapping herself out of the brief euphoria from this woman's refusal to acknowledge her royalty.

"Where to?" the private pilot asked, blowing out another smoke ring.

And it was then that Tenel Ka had to stop herself, for she did not realize where Jacen might be right now; given that message he gave her telling him that he was searching for the missing Jaina, he could be anywhere now.

Nevertheless, Tenel Ka found herself answering, somehow against her own free will, when she said, "Dathomir."

"Fifty thousand credits," the private pilot said without preamble. "And that's just getting to Dathomir. It'll cost you another fifty thousand to supplement my return expenses here."

Tenel Ka grinned. "I do not think that extra fifty thousand will be necessary."

The private pilot looked back at the abandoning Queen Mother with dismay. "And why is that?"

"Oh, do not think that it is because I am unwilling to pay that much or that I do not have enough money," Tenel Ka said. "But even if my account was not closed by the Fountain Palace security systems by the time you bring me to Dathomir, you will not want to return here."

The private pilot opened her mouth to ask why, but just as well closed it once the reasons came to her mind as to why Tenel Ka would be right; Ta'a Chume'Dan might be in ruins from all the chaos that the absence of the Queen Mother would cause.

"Twenty-five thousand then," the private pilot answered eventually, "so I can reestablish my business elsewhere; perhaps in AG territory." She then bent down beneath her desk and produced a box-like machine with a series of buttons with numbers on it, set the machine on her desktop, and pressed a non-numbered button on the machine to activate it.

"Type in your personal bank number," the pilot said, "while it's still accessible. And make it all seventy-five thousand in one shot, just to simplify matters."

.

The first place Jacen went to in his search for Jaina was the Esfandia system, home of the sole HoloNet transceiver between the Unknown Regions and the rest of the known galaxy. There, he transmitted a message from the _Solo Quest_ to Baron Soontir Fel's private comm channel, supplied, with Fel's permission, by Jaina and Jag sometime after Jacen took office as Grand Master of the Jedi Order.

In the brief conversation that Jacen had with Fel, the latter transmitted all of the available information that the Chiss search parties dispatched to find Jaina and Jag had returned to Csilla.

"For some reason, I found that a lot of information that would normally be available to my security clearance was off-limits to me," Fel explained. "But this was what I was able to get."

Jacen looked from the screen on his ship's console letting him know that the data package was sent to the _Quest_ back to Fel's holographic form. "Why do you think that is?"

Fel shrugged. "I have nothing to support this claim, but I think there may be some corruption in the upper ranks of the Ascendancy's echelon. I intend to investigate it."

"Would you like any Jedi assistance?" Jacen asked. "I can make a call back to Denon and-"

"That won't be necessary, Master Solo," Fel interrupted. "At least I don't think so. But even if it was, and there really is something of a conspiracy going around protecting information that may lead back to Jaina and Jag, I know I can't afford attracting suspicion with a Jedi presence. I already have this line encrypted from my end, but talking to you right now is posing a great risk."

"I understand," Jacen said.

"I sincerely hope that you can find something in all of this that we may have missed that can lead back to my son and daughter-in-law, Master Solo," Fel said with worry seeping through his tone.

"I'll do my best," Jacen replied, understanding exactly where the man was coming from. "And thank you for providing me with this information, Baron Fel."

With that, the two men shared a nod of mutual respect, and Fel signed off. Jacen was then left to search through the _Solo Quest_'s databanks to sift through the information that Jag's father provided him.

After nearly two hours - which felt like an eternity that was as stressful as it was simultaneously boring for Jacen - he finally found a lead - or, he mentally told himself afterward, he thought he find a lead.

According to the interrogations charts that Fel sent Jacen, several of the pirates who were found and arrested by the search parties for shipping illegal goods through Chiss territory had brought up a Rodian smuggler by the name of Gerlal Udono. What brought Jacen's attention to Captain Udono was that he was the only illegal trader between the Unknown Regions and the rest of the galaxy to ship people for slavery in lieu of drugs or other banned goods. Udono and his crew of the Trandoshan heavy freighter _Service Sender_ would go back and forth between Chiss-occupied space and non-Chiss-occupied space in the Unknown Regions to various worlds in the Outer Rim, such as Zygerria, Tatooine, various worlds in the Hapes Consortium, and Dathomir.

And that was when Jacen decided to take the _Quest_ over to the latter planet.

Two days after leaving the Unknown Regions, Jacen dropped his ship out of hyperspace in the Dathomir system, went through the usual landing procedures with the planet's ground control, and brought it down through the atmosphere to land in the exact same spaceport that he had landed on years before.

Debarking from the _Quest_ with the Jedi robes he wore, his shoes, a small radio in his robes, and the lightsaber hanging on his belt, Jacen left his locked-up ship under the sight of the spaceport's female manager and her posse of wage slaves who overlooked and took care of the few other space-worthy vessels in the port. Stepping outside, he took a deep breath of the Dathomiri air, allowing himself a moment of necessary relaxation in his search for Jaina and Jag as he savored the familiar forest surroundings that he had visited during his post-Yuuzhan Vong War sojourn.

But then the moment passed, and Jacen began trekking on into the woods, back toward the lodge that the Singing Mountain Clan had provided him back when he visited during his sojourn; assuming that it hadn't been taken by anyone else, he would use that lodge to stake out on the planet and listen to his radio to find if any Trandoshan heavy freighters would enter the system.

Half an hour into the trek, during which he kept his ears peeled on the radio that he now held active in his hand, Jacen finally arrived in the village of the Singing Mountain Clan.

And right before him stood a smiling Tenel Ka, garbed not in her flamboyant Hapan robes, but the plain and simple garb of a Dathomiri witch, just as she used to wear when she and Jacen attended the Jedi praxeum on Yavin 4 when they were teenagers.

"Hello, Jacen," Tenel Ka said, her tone bright and happy. "I knew that you would be here."

Jacen just stood there, dumbfounded and perplexed at his friend's presence here. "Tenel Ka? What are you doing here?"

"I came here to be with you, Jacen," Tenel Ka replied. "And now we can finally be together."


	10. Chapter 10

Jacen stared back at Tenel Ka in utter perplexity. "What?"

"You heard me, Jacen," she said. "I said I came here to be with you."

Jacen was silent for a long moment, his confused gaze still fixated on his friend. "Um, okay... Uh, Tenel Ka... are you saying that you left the Hapes Consortium, somehow knowing that I would be here, because you want to be with me _why_?"

Tenel Ka gave him a mixed look of both irritation and amusement. "Well, is it not obvious enough to you, wise Grand Master of the Jedi Order?" she asked sarcastically. "It is because I love you."

Jacen's eyes widened in surprise. "You _what_?"

Tenel Ka made a laugh that matched her mixed expression of irritation and amusement; it sounded to Jacen that she thought that he was _cute_, as if she were a teenage schoolgirl instead of the fierce warrior woman and strong Queen Mother that she was bred to be.

"I am surprised that it is not obvious to you, Jacen," Tenel Ka said. "Can you not feel it? Search your soul, you know that we are meant to be together."

Jacen's mouth was now hanging low, thinking that his perplexity was reaching an all-time high now. "Uh, Tenel Ka... you do know that I'm married to Danni, right? And, keep in mind, just so we're clear, this is _not_ an open relationship, it's very much a traditional, no extramarital affairs, til-death-do-we-part marriage."

Tenel Ka's cutesy expression dropped. "Are you saying that you love her more than me, Jacen?"

"Pretty much," Jacen replied carefully, as if he were talking to a crazy person. But then his tone became more assured as he asked, "And how did you know that I was going to be here anyway?"

Tenel Ka was slow to respond, as she was now looking back at Jacen with what looked like pain and betrayal on her expression. But she eventually responded with, "Because I just had a feeling that you would be here," in a tone that matched her now dour expression.

"You mean through the Force?" Jacen asked.

Tenel Ka shrugged. "I suppose so."

"Well, Tenel Ka, even if I did want to be with you and forsake my marriage with Danni," Jacen said in a rather straightforward tone, belying the awkwardness that he felt in speaking to Tenel Ka about this, "I came here on a lead about Jaina and her husband's whereabouts. So I don't have time for this anyway."

"Then maybe I can help you, Jacen," Tenel Ka was quick to say.

"I wasn't intending on getting any help on this mission," Jacen said more forcefully than he intended. "And besides, shouldn't you be back at the Consortium? I imagine that the matriarchy would be missing its Queen Mother by now."

Tenel Ka shook her head. "Forget the Consortium, Jacen. It deserves to die off."

Jacen looked at his friend in further surprise. "What are you talking about?"

"Jacen, I have been in the Consortium for far too long," Tenel Ka explained. "I had barely seen Jaina or any of the others since the end of the Yuuzhan Vong War, and I had never seen you since then until we met via that first commlink transmission. And all throughout, I have had to deal with ungrateful, treacherous Duchas who had to be strong-armed into supporting my rule, even if it was just to stay out of my way."

"So you'll just let the Consortium fall into chaos?" Jacen asked in shock.

"If it is worthy of being saved, it will be saved from anarchy in time," Tenel Ka replied in dismissal as she approached Jacen. "What matters now is that I help you find Jaina and Jag."

Jacen took a step back from his friend. "That's not what you came here to do."

Tenel Ka then looked at Jacen with a slightly angry expression and a tilted head. "Are you saying that I do not care about Jaina?"

"I'm saying that you wanna use this as an opportunity to try to get close to me, so that you hope that I could fall in love with you."

"What is wrong with that?"

Jacen's eyes widened, his expression now of incredulity over what Tenel Ka just said. "_Because I love Danni_," he emphasized. "She and I are happily married. I'm not going to turn my back on her."

Tenel Ka now appeared to be getting more frustrated. "Why do you even love her anyway? She is no warrior. She was not even worthy of becoming a Jedi."

"That doesn't matter to me," Jacen replied. "I still love her. I'm sorry, Tenel Ka, but for all our years at the academy on Yavin Four, I'm afraid to tell you that my feelings for you aren't the same as they were when we were teens. But I am worried about you now; if you do love me this much, then I do feel sorry for you that you spent all those years in the Consortium unable to find anyone you could care about."

Tenel Ka said nothing as she stared back at Jacen with a look of shock on her face. After a long moment, as tears started to well up in her eyes, she finally said, "Jacen... do you have any idea how I felt when I thought you were dead? After Myrkr? I nearly turned to the dark side because of it; I nearly fell apart because I thought you were lost."

Another moment passed, in which Jacen was starting to feel guilty for what must be going on in his friend's head; he figured it wouldn't be a good idea to remind Tenel Ka that there was no dark side of the Force anymore than there was the light. Eventually, though, Tenel Ka turned away from him and ran off into the village; by then, Jacen noticed that there were some Dathomiri women noticing the runaway Hapan Queen Mother before they turned to look back at Jacen with looks of suspicion.

In the crowd, however, a certain elderly, dark-skinned woman walked past the retreating Tenel Ka, sparing the abandoning Queen Mother a five-second glance, before she returned to approaching Jacen.

The woman nodded. "Jacen."

He returned the nod. "Verrella."

"Your hut has been prepared for you, as requested," Verrella said. "If you will follow me."

Jacen nodded again and let the elderly woman lead him through the village to his hut; by now, Tenel Ka had all but vanished into the village.

Jacen knew Verrella back when he had first visited Dathomir during his postwar sojourn. Verrella had been assigned to Jacen as his guide through the planet by the late Augwynne Djo, Tenel Ka's maternal great-grandmother and leader of the Singing Mountain Clan. Jacen remembered hearing about Augwynne's death of old age sometime following his departure from Dathomir; he wondered if Tenel Ka had had the time to suspend her duties as Hapan Queen Mother to attend her great-grandmother's funeral.

"So, tell me, Jacen," Verella said, "I noticed that our late leader's granddaughter was running away from you, looking rather upset. Why is that?"

"It's a personal matter that I'd rather not talk about," Jacen said.

"Would it be fine if I ask Tenel Ka myself sometime?"

"If she's willing," he said offhandedly.

"Very well," Verella responded neutrally.

Jacen didn't get a read on Verella's feelings on the matter; was the old woman suspicious as to what Jacen had done to Tenel Ka to make her upset? He figured that it would be good to change the subject.

"So who succeeded Augwynne Djo as clan leader?" he asked.

"The successor's name is Heraja Gesh," Verella answered. "She is quite fond of you."

"Oh, that's nice," Jacen said, belying the awkwardness that he felt now. He hoped that Verella wasn't the only woman on Dathomir who wasn't attracted to him.

A little while later, Verella finally stopped by an empty hut and waved Jacen in, leaving him alone. He then sat on the hut's bed, set up his radio, and tuned it to incoming frequencies of a certain vessel that might lead back to his sister and her husband.

But as he sat and waited, either for his stomach to go hungry for food or for a ship captained by a certain Rodian to enter the Dathomir system or for anything else, Jacen couldn't help but think back to that conversation that he had with Tenel Ka. He did feel bad for his friend, but at the same time, how could he reciprocate her feelings? Even if he wasn't married to Danni - or even if he wasn't in love with his own wife to begin with - Jacen still didn't have those feelings for Tenel Ka that he used to have. And looking back on it, he felt that it was nothing more than a passing teenaged fancy; if it was real for Tenel Ka then, how could Jacen help her?

_One situation at a time_, Jacen thought. _First, save Jaina and Jag, then maybe I can help Tenel Ka_.

But then his eyes widened with a sudden realization, and he took out his datapad and cued it to the HoloNet.

Sure enough, as the news reported, the Hapes Consortium was being consumed in chaos.


	11. Chapter 11

Having been debriefed about what tonight's headlining topic would be by his producers, award-winning Chev anchorman Perre Needmo allowed the makeup people around him to polish him up for his next live broadcast, dreading that he would be among the first to let the citizens of the Alliance of the Galaxy know about what was plaguing a section of the galaxy right now.

As soon as the lights were on and one of his producers had ended the countdown for the vidcams to start rolling, Needmo began reading off the monitor directly ahead of him.

"Good evening, citizens of the Alliance of the Galaxy. Our top story tonight is the chaos now being sown throughout the Hapes Consortium."

As Needmo continued with the story, he knew that people watching this broadcast on the HoloNet would now be seeing pre-recorded footage of mayhem in the streets of many Hapan worlds, including Hapes itself, with citizens of the Consortium rioting, damaging property wildly, and murdering each other violently, in spite of the efforts made in some shots of Hapan security officials and police officers trying to quell the chaos. Accompanying bits of that footage would be snippets of space battles among the warring Battle Dragons and other war vessels. Needmo himself was still unsure as to whether or not reporters like Madhi Vaandt and others who went out of their way to record that footage had made it out of the violence safely to return back to AG space.

"In light of the discovery by an anonymous Hapan source that Queen Mother Tenel Ka Djo has disappeared mysteriously, the entirety of the Consortium has erupted into anarchy. In the absence of their beloved Queen Mother, Hapan citizens find themselves without reason to follow the laws of a Consortium without a head. Security officials among the sixty-three worlds and other sectors in the Transitory Mists are hard-pressed to keep what order they can, even without the lead of the Queen Mother that they worship as a goddess. Rivalling Duchas have taken advantage of the mayhem and are now in the process of openly warring with each other for not only territory, but for whom can succeed the vacant throne of power on Hapes.

"As for the whereabouts of Queen Mother Tenel Ka herself, Hapan officials who are doing their best to keep what order they can muster have claimed to volunteering Alliance of the Galaxy military forces, the Jedi who are also trying to help, and news officials of _The Perre Needmo Newshour_ and other AG news organizations that, at this point, they are unaware as to what had happened to Her Majesty. We here at _The Perre Needmo Newshour_ continue to lack information as to the Queen Mother's whereabouts at this time, but we will inform the public if and when we do receive that information."

.

Across the galaxy on Dathomir, Jacen, having heard enough from what Perre Needmo just told him, immediately shut off his datapad and rushed out of his hut to find Tenel Ka. He delved into the Force to locate her presence, but as he searched outside his temporary homestead, he found that his friend was shielding her whereabouts from him through the Force.

She must be mad at him, Jacen thought.

Hurrying, he rushed over to Verrella's hut, knocked on her door, and the old woman responded almost instantly.

"I need you to take me to wherever Tenel Ka is," he said in a rush.

Verrella simply nodded and left her home to lead the way to Tenel Ka's own hut, hurrying her own pace for Jacen's benefit. Once they got there after a few minutes, Verrella stood off to the side as Jacen began knocking on his friend's door.

"Tenel Ka, please, open up!" Jacen called. "We have to talk!"

"Go away," Tenel Ka's surprisingly subdued voice returned.

"Look, Tenel Ka, this is important!" Jacen said after a moment. "You have no idea just what your absence is bringing to the Consortium right now! It's absolute anarchy over there!"

"As I said, I do not care," Tenel Ka's still-subdued tone replied from the inside of the hut. "I knew that this would happen. Now leave me alone."

Jacen sighed, frustrated in not knowing what else to try to tell his friend. But before he could even try to think as to what else he could say to her, he felt, through the Force, several beings enter the Dathomir system. Quickly, he took out the radio that he had keyed to incoming frequencies from ships that might communicate with the planet, turned it on, and heard a male Rodian voice speak with the female Dathomiri spaceport manager that Jacen himself had conversed with upon his return here.

"Dathomir Control," the male Rodian voice said, "we have a new delivery of toys for the children here."

"Confirmed," the spaceport manager replied stoically. "You may send your shuttles down to the coordinates that have now been sent to you."

"Thank you."

"'Toys for the children here' is code for male sex slaves for the adult women here," Verrella said to Jacen, having overhead what was spoken between the Rodian and the spaceport manager just as the Grand Master had.

Jacen looked at the elderly woman in disgust. "How do you know this?"

"I have heard women from other tribes calling their male sex slaves as toys," Verrella elaborated, her tone betraying neither approval or condemnation, but somehow objective neutrality. "Apparently, that is what they see their men as, and I at least presume that that is what the captain of this ship is talking about."

"And he's what I've come here for," Jacen said as he shut off the radio and replaced it in his belt. He then looked up into the sky and saw that, by now, several shuttles were appearing to descend at various points.

Jacen turned back to Verella. "I have to go now."

"What about your matter with Augwynne Djo's great-granddaughter?" Verrella asked.

Jacen hesitated. "I'll deal with my matter with Tenel Ka later. Right now is probably the best opportunity for me to find my sister."

He then turned away and, with the Force as his guide to pinpoint where the lifeforms in the shuttles would be heading to, began running through and then out of the village for a site that one of the shuttles would be unloading their batch of male sex slaves.


	12. Chapter 12

As soon as Jacen sensed through the Force that he had neared the landing site of one of the male slave-harboring shuttles, he placed himself behind a tree and peered around it to find that, indeed, there was a shuttle landed in a clearing only a few dozen meters away. The ship had its boarding ramp lowered, and already a group of human, and possibly Hapan, men dressed scantily were led down the ramp by an equal number of other human and alien men with varying assault rifles in hand.

As well, Jacen sensed that there was a small group of Dathomiri Witches approaching from the opposite side from where Jacen was. Quickly, he made himself small in the Force, as he had learned from Vergere so many years earlier, and waited.

At the sound of approaching footsteps on the other side of the jungle, Jacen carefully peered around the corner again and saw, as expected, a group of Dathomiri Witches appear before the would-be slaves and their captors.

Even though he knew that he couldn't save the other groups of male slaves from being sold as human sex toys for misandrous Witches, he might as well save these men.

He stepped out of his hiding spot and walked into the clearing, attracting the attention of the slavers, the slaves, and the Witches before he uttered a word.

"I'm going to give you gentlemen-" Jacen pointed at the slavers before redirecting his finger at the Witches "-and you ladies one chance to give these men-" he now redirected his finger to the slaves "-back their freedom."

The leading Witch - a middle-aged yellow-skinned woman with rippling muscles showing through the sparse, jungle-appropriate clothing she wore - laughed almost instantly.

"Your reputation precedes you, Grand Master Solo," the lead Witch said, "but even you can't take on a whole group of Witches, let alone a group of us supported by these gentlemen right here." She nodded at the mercenaries who shifted the aim of their guns from the would-be slaves to Jacen, just as the Witches themselves unholstered their lightsaber-resistant combat staffs from the slings along their backs.

Jacen counted about thirteen male slavers, all armed with an assault rifle - and each of them having escorted a would-be slave, which Jacen knew he didn't have to worry about right now - and about eight Witches, including their leader.

This should be easy, Jacen thought.

Whipping out his green-bladed lightsaber from his belt and igniting it in an instant, he rushed toward the slavers and Witches just as the former group opened fire on him and the latter group also rushed in to duel the Grand Master of the Jedi Order.

Jacen expertly deflected several of the laser bolts fired at him back at seven of the mercenaries, killing those mercs while dodging the bolts of the rest. Once those seven slavers were dead, he had met the Witch leader head-on and began trading blows against her staff just as her subordinates began to add their own staffs - each tipped with lethally electric currents at their front ends, as supplied by each Witch's own dark energies - to try to singe Jacen to death.

And that was what allowed Jacen to use the Vaapad fighting style; he let himself fall into the Force almost completely, and he found himself barely able to notice as he struck down Witch after Witch in the span of half a minute; simultaneously, he deflected more shots from the remaining mercenaries to send the bolts right back to their firers, killing them, until all of the mercs were gone and the yellow-skinned Witch was the only opponent left to fight.

By then, Jacen fell out of the Vaapad fighting style to find that the lead Witch was now several meters away from him, her form in a ready stance for further combat, and her expression was one of pure, unadulterated hatred directed at Jacen.

He sensed that, because he had killed her fellow Witches, she was out for blood now; she didn't care if he could fall back into Vaapad and kill her even more easily than when he slashed down her subordinate Witches.

That could be good, Jacen thought; an opponent driven by blind fury could ultimately be brought to their downfall, as Jacen's fights with Onimi and Darth Krayt all but demonstrated. On the other hand, it could be overwhelming for Jacen.

As the remaining Witch rushed in, screaming wildly, Jacen figured that he would find out soon.

He allowed himself to fall back into a defensive position, blocking each and every one of his opponent's vicious strikes without getting a single scorch mark on his person. he continued to let the Witch try to strike him down, remembering what he had passed on the way here and moving back ever closer to that trap that he would spring as soon as he neared it.

As soon as his danger sense spiked of something behind him, Jacen promptly disengaged from fighting the Witch and jumped and rolled off to his left. Then, once he had leaped back up to his feet, he sprang upward into the trees above, where he grabbed a vine. Naturally, the Witch below followed as she, too, Force-jumped into the air after him, her vengeful screams preceding her.

But just as Jacen had grabbed the vine, it swung him forward on sheer momentum, and right below, the electrified tip of the Witch's staff was coming to electrocute him to death by the sole of his left boot.

However, with his lightsaber-wielding hand, Jacen deflected the staff away from killing him and kicked his right boot against the vengeful Witch's face, sending her plummeting back to the ground and...

Right into the pit of quicksand that Jacen had rolled out of the way from; and because of the still-electrified tip of her staff, the Witch was instantly electrocuted as she was submerged in the quicksand.

By the time Jacen had released the vine and landed on the edge of the quicksand pit, he felt the remaining Witch's life fizzle out into nothingness.

With that, he turned away and headed back to the clearing, where the frightened would-be male slaves were waiting on their knees. Jacen extinguished the blade of his lightsaber, hooked it back to his belt, and waved for them to stand up.

He then pointed to a certain direction in the jungle behind him. "About a few klicks away from here, you'll be in the village of the Singing Mountain Clan," he told them. "Just continue going in that direction until you reach it. If not, you'll most likely be found by one of the Witches of that clan who will sense your presences through the Force; just tell them that you were freed by Jacen Solo. I can assure you, none of them will make you into sex slaves."

"How can you be sure?" one of the would-be slaves asked Jacen.

"They abandoned the practice of male slavery after I had trained among them," Jacen explained. "Now go, before any Witches not of the Singing Mountain Clan find you."

A few of the slaves nodded before they headed off in the direction that Jacen indicated.

"And be careful of quicksand," Jacen called back to them.

Once the would-be slaves were out of eyesight, Jacen turned back to the waiting shuttle and approached it to head up its ramp.


	13. Chapter 13

Once Jacen had the slave shuttle's engines up and running, and its boarding ramp closed and sealed, he headed up toward Dathomir's skies overhead, joining the retinue of other slave shuttles that had just deposited their loads of sex slaves to the Dathomiri Witches to buy.

Thankfully for Jacen, he was only ever contacted by the heavy freighter Dreadnaught _Service Sender_, which was parked in orbit several millions of miles away from the envelope of Dathomir's atmosphere, to give him the coordinates as to where he would land the shuttle in the _Sender_'s hangar bay.

Minutes after Jacen had the shuttle in space, it was now docked alongside the other shuttles in the _Sender_'s bay. Then, once he had this shuttle's engines off and the ramp down, he created a White Current illusion about himself as he left the smaller ship.

Everyone else in the hangar would believe that Jacen Solo was now an entire group of human and alien mercenaries - the same mercs who were supposed to have sold those would-be slaves down on Dathomir. As for the vidcams that wouldn't be fooled by the White Current illusion, Jacen had managed to simultaneously use a Force-scrambling technique that created nothing but static to any of the hangar bay's recording vidcams; sure, it would be suspicious and arouse some kind of attention, but it was certainly better, at the moment, than just allowing the cams to continue recording and show that Grand Master Jacen Solo of the Jedi Order was aboard the _Service Sender_ instead of the expected group of mercs who should have poured out of the shuttle.

As for making sure that the illusion itself wouldn't be compromised, Jacen, after using the Force trick to scramble the hangar bay's vidcams, then commenced a widespread mind-trick to the actual mercs in the bay who thought that they might be meeting up with friends and chitchatting; those mercs simply ignored the illusion and went about their way.

"All right, gentlemen," the voice of the _Service Sender_'s Captain Gerlal Udono called through the Dreadnaught's loudspeakers, "we're prepared to leave the Dathomir system and head off to our next destination. You will all be debriefed about it midway through the flight. 'Til then, you can return to your quarters."

Jacen stopped in his tracks and allowed the real mercs to leave the hangar bay before he finally allowed the White Current illusion to drop around him. He then approached the hangar bay's exit, opened it up, and looked around to see a corridor empty on both sides; when Jacen felt that there were no incoming presences through the Force, he carefully stepped out, making sure that whatever vidcams were in this corridor were scrambled, as he began looking for a door leading to a case of emergency stairs - taking a turbolift, which would have required yet more scrambling of a watching vidcam, might get him trapped should whoever would be paying attention to the vidcams try to take action, like jam the elevator.

Sure enough, after a few moments of looking through corridors, Jacen finally found a door leading to some emergency stairs. There, he opened it up and began heading up to where he expected the _Service Sender_'s bridge to be.

By the time he got to the topmost level of the Dreadnaught, he initiated another White Current illusion, making himself appear, to others, that he was one of the mercs that he killed back down on Dathomir. With that intact, and with yet another scrambling of security vidcams as he passed from the emergency staircase through the corridor leading to the bridge, he entered the bridge itself.

Organized like a typical Dreadnaught, with several beings of different species - though the gender was pretty much the same, as they were all male - doing their duties as they should.

And standing in the center of the bridge was Captain Udono, who turned to face who he saw to be one of his mercs.

"Grendon," Udono said, "can I help you?"

"I'd like to speak to you in your office, Captain," Jacen said as he subtly waved one of his hands, commencing a mind-trick on Udono.

The Rodian was stunned for a moment as the Force worked on his weak mind, and then he said, "Of course. If you will follow me."

Udono then walked past Jacen, who then followed the Rodian, and the disguised human allowed the alien captain to lead him back outside. A few minutes later, and after just a few more Force-flashes to scramble more security vidcams, and Jacen and Udono were in the latter's office.

And Jacen dropped the White Current illusion before Udono turned around to face him again.

"Now what was it that you wanted to-" The captain's question was cut off in a shocked gasp when he saw who he was talking to now. But without anymore hesitation, Udono whipped out his hand blaster from his belt.

However, before the Rodian could fire a shot, Jacen used the Force to crumple the blaster's barrel before he kicked the now-useless weapon away from Udono's hand. The captain then turned and rushed to his desk, no doubt to sound an alarm, but Jacen quickly tackled him to the floor and pinned him by his left arm.

"Help!" Udono screamed. "Help me!"

"It's no use," Jacen told him. "I already put up a Force-bubble around this office to cancel any sound from escaping into the corridor outside."

"Oh, by the gods, what do you want?!" Udono cried.

"My sister, Jaina Solo Fel, and her husband, Jagged Fel," Jacen said curtly. "Where are they?"

"What makes you think I know?!" Udono asked in his panic.

"I did some digging," Jacen said. "You're the most likely person to know where they are."

"I don't know what happened to them, I swear!" Udono pleaded.

By then, Jacen shifted his concentration from keeping the sound bubble up to probing Udono's presence. The Rodian wasn't lying about not knowing where Jaina and Jag was.

But then...

Jacen released Udono's arm as he stood up, but just as the Rodian was warily pushing himself back to his feet, Jacen shoved him back down again with the Force, pinning him there again as the Jedi took out his datapad to bring up the visages of both his sister and her husband.

He then bent down to place the side-by-side images before Udono's snouted face. "Do these two look familiar to you at all?" the Grand Master asked.

Udono was slow to respond as he observed the images, but eventually, he said, "Oh, yeah. I remember them. Yeah, we sold them off to... I mean, uh, um, no, I-I never saw either of them in my-"

Udono's lie quickly turned into a scream as Jacen further harnessed the Force to throw the Rodian across his office, where the latter crashed against a wall behind him and slid to his hindquarters.

When the Rodian recovered from that experience, Jacen, his datapad now replaced back in his belt, loomed over Udono with an angry scowl.

"Don't lie to me again," the Grand Master intoned. "What have you done to them?"

"Okay, okay, I sold them off!" Udono admitted fearfully.

"To whom?"

"I sold your sister to Dev'lia!"

"The Bothan sex criminal?"

Udono nodded, looking like he was about to cry from how Jacen might react to this news.

But Jacen quickly calmed himself from simply activating his lightsaber and removing the Rodian's head from his shoulders right then and there; he put the potential scenarios of what that sicko from Nar Shaddaa could be doing to Jaina right now. He only hoped that he could save Jaina from Dev'lia's clutches before that vile Bothan killed her, never mind whether or not Jaina might actually recover from the psychological scarring that Dev'lia might have brought upon her.

"And what about Jag?" Jacen eventually asked Udono in a barely neutral tone.

"To Ducha Lorangal of the Hapes Consortium," Udono answered, still obviously scared. "You know, that vigilante Ducha going after Dev'lia and his guys."

"I know who Lorangal is," Jacen said sharply.

"Okay," Udono replied meekly.

"Do you know where Dev'lia and Lorangal are?"

"I don't know where Lorangal is, I swear," Udono said. "All I know is what everyone else knows; she's a vigilante running around trying to find Dev'lia and his gang."

And Jacen could tell that, once again, the Rodian was actually telling the truth.

"But I do know where Dev'lia is," the captain concluded. "He's in an unnamed system in the Unknown Regions; a system that not even the Chiss own."

Jacen then thought back to what Soontir Fel told him about his suspicions, about corruption being in the upper ranks of the Chiss Ascendancy. Could there be some kind of connection between Fel's suspicions and where Dev'lia was no doubt holding - and possibly doing worse to - Jaina? If so, what could that connection be?

"So, hey, um... I can give you the coordinates to where Dev'lia is and-"

"You're going to take me to him," Jacen cut off Udono again. "You're going to follow everything I say from here on out, you got that? Otherwise, I might just call in to my contacts in the Jedi Order and the Alliance of the Galaxy government and have you and your entire crew arrested for shipping slaves."

If Udono had any doubts that Jacen wouldn't do that even if the Rodian did help the Jedi, the captain kept that to himself. "It's a deal then," he said reluctantly.

"Great," Jacen said in a level tone. "So, as of now, your vidcams are working again. And I should tell you, you lost about thirteen of your crew, by me I should say, down on Dathomir before they could even sell their slaves. Just letting you know of your profit losses."


	14. Chapter 14

Against his will, Jag - the right half of his body painted blue to symbolize his growing-up among the Chiss, something that Lorangal learned from him when she asked about his life and forced out of him - ejaculated into Lorangal's vagina as the vigilante Ducha squealed in delight from her own climax. She then dropped beside her captive victim and cuddled up next to him while he silently fumed that his wrists were stuncuffed to the frame of the bed, disallowing him from using his now-clenched hands from strangling this bitch to death.

"I have to say, Jag," Lorangal whispered into his ear, "you're my favorite toy among the rest."

After a few moments, Lorangal pushed herself out of bed and began collecting her clothes, putting them back on one at a time until she was fully clothed in her resplendent gown and dress. She then headed over to the exit to her bedchamber and opened it, waving the two Hapan soldiers standing guard outside to come in.

"You may take Jag back with the others," she told them. "I'm done with him for the day." She then reached into one of the pockets of her gown and produced the keys to the stuncuffs holding Jag's wrists and ankles bound to the bed's frames, giving two to each guard.

As the guards went and unlocked the stuncuffs, freeing Jag from the bed - though obviously not from his capture by Lorangal - he offered no resistance as each guard grabbed him by an arm and ushered him out of the bedroom.

But as soon as Jag and the guards were gone, Lorangal's consort appeared at the threshold of the door.

Lorangal noticed the nervous-looking woman at the door and inquired with raised eyebrows, "Yes, Lady Zar?"

"Milady, I beg your pardon," Zar said, "but in case you did not know, the Hapes Consortium is in utter chaos."

"I am already familiar with the news," Lorangal replied evenly. "What of it?"

"Well, um... Milady, would it not be a good opportunity to return and claim power for the throne?" Zar asked.

"I would not mind to try to get the throne for myself," Lorangal said, "but as it is, I will not return until I have claimed vengeance for Drekana's death." Her tone then became more impassioned. "I will kill Dev'lia and everyone supporting him, and if that means that I lose my opportunity to claim the throne of Hapes, then so be it. Do you have any problems with that, Lady Zar?"

Zar just continued to stare at her superior for a moment in what amounted to repressed incredulity until she stammered, "Uh, no, no, no, Milady. I was simply curious as to why you would not wish to vie for the power of Queen Mother back in the Consortium."

"Has your curiosity been sated now, Lady Zar?"

"Um... yes, it has, Milady," Zar replied uncertainly.

"Then why are you still here?" Lorangal asked rudely.

Without another word, Zar offered a curtsey and turned to leave, making sure that the door was closed behind her along the way.

As Zar continued back to her quarters, she passed by the room in which Jag had been placed; a bunker of sorts for the twelve men whom Lorangal kept as her sex playthings, which included Jag.

Inside this dimly-lit bunker, each of the men - all of whom were naked and bore attractively muscular physiques - had their lumpy beds to sleep on in two small rows, with a single toilet and sink stationed opposite the exit to the room. There was no shower, but anytime Lorangal chose someone on whom she would mount, an armed Hapan guard would come in and escort - forcefully, if need be - the Ducha's chosen "partner" to the nearby shower room so that he looked and smelled nice for Lorangal to have sex with. The same occurred whenever they were led to the exercise room, to keep their musculatures up to snuff for the Ducha's pleasure, or when they had to go into the costume room, dressing themselves up to be even more quickly dressed down for Lorangal; Jag, for his part, had been dressed in a Grand Admiral's uniform, since whenever Lorangal thought of a Chiss, she thought of Thrawn, as many people did outside the Ascendancy. And every now and then, trays of food would be brought via hovercart by a guard who wouldn't hesitate to shoot them all down with her assault blaster if they offered the slightest bit of trouble, even if that meant upsetting Lorangal over the loss of her toys.

With nothing more to do - what with their dinners for the day having all but been eaten - Lorangal's degraded playthings sat silently on their uncomfortable cots, looking down at the floor, thinking whatever thoughts they could to try to find some reason to smile in this situation.

Jag himself tried to think about Jaina, what might be happening to her, how she was doing, if she was even alive, for that matter. He wished he had the Force to know what had happened to his wife, just as she and her brother Jacen would know what would happen to the other, what with their twin Force bond and all.

Jag tried to think back to the good times that he had with Jaina, but because he had been used by Lorangal yet again, he couldn't help but see that vile witch on top of him, getting all the enjoyment she could get from his forced erection. Thinking about it turned his stomach, and it turned his stomach so much that it... that it...

Immediately slapping his hand over his mouth, he quickly stood up from his cot and rushed across the bunker to the toilet, barely making it there before he allowed the gorge that rose up from his belly to spew down into the bowl below. He allowed more the gorge to stream out of his body, letting the pain wrack his body, as he knelt against the toilet.

When he was done, feeling starved yet not wanting to eat anymore, he started to sob, and he continued to cry in despair even as he felt the hand of one of his fellow sex slaves touch his shoulder in comfort.

And meanwhile, across the galaxy, in the remote base where Jaina was used for a slightly different purpose, she cried on top of the table in Dev'lia's Dirties' dancers' lounge, taking solace in the company of her fellow exotic dancers.

.

Standing behind Captain Udono, Jacen carefully surveyed the _Service Sender_'s bridge and her crew, who barely seemed to pay any attention to the overseeing Jedi Grand Master. However, through the Force, as always, Jacen sensed, along with the dedication to their duties, the crew's apprehension to his presence.

Of course, Jacen didn't care; so long as none of them decided to violate their captain's (forced) orders and try to attack him, they could stew in their apprehension all they wanted. So long as the _Sender_ brought him to wherever Jaina was, let the Dreadnaught's crew feel uncomfortable, he thought. After all, this is the same crew that dealt in the market of slave trades, a practice that was as illegal in most of the galaxy as it was immoral, so maybe letting them feel as uncomfortable as they were now was the least they could go through after all the lives that they no doubt ruined by placing those lives into slavery; and sex slavery, no less.

Jacen was suddenly brought out of his thoughts when an alarm sounded throughout the _Sender_.

"That's the intruder alert," Udono explained to Jacen. "Someone else is aboard this ship." He then turned away to a section of his bridge crew. "What do we have on the vidcams?"

"Static, sir, on several screens, from the hangar bay and into the corridor outside," an Ugnaught crewman reported, looking at Udono and directing a hateful gaze at Jacen.

"Just like what you did with our cams!" Udono remarked to the Grand Master.

"Whoever's doing this must also be a Force-user, if they don't have any kind of equipment that could do the same thing," Jacen pointed out. "I'll try to sense them through the Force."

After a moment, though, Jacen shook his head. "I can't get a good read on whoever it is," he elaborated. "So they must be a Force-user." And he already had an idea of who it could be; he didn't know how she could have come aboard in time, but he had a feeling as to who it could be.

"Order your men to shut off the alert," Jacen commanded Udono. "I'll go and handle this myself." He turned away to leave the bridge, only to stop in his tracks halfway there and level a finger back at Udono. "And don't do anything stupid, like having your men turn on me."

Udono shook his head. "I promise not to."

Jacen nodded and placed his hand back to his side. "With your cooperation," he said, "you and your men might not get life in prison when this is all over; I can vouch for reduced sentences."

"I don't suppose we could just get-out-of-jail-free cards when this is all over?" one of the crewmen asked coyly.

Jacen grinned sardonically. "Not unless you've saved the galaxy," he said, and then turned back to fulfill the act of leaving the bridge.

Now back in the _Service Sender_'s corridors, he traced his feel of the unidentifiable Force presence back to its source, which was getting closer to him even as he approached it.

After he rounded a few corners, he came into contact with Tenel Ka, who, without hesitation, had her one arm encircled around his neck and pulled him in for a long, impassioned kiss.

A kiss that he managed to break off by shoving her away before wiping the sleeve of his right arm along his mouth.

"Don't ever do that again," he intoned.

Tenel Ka now levelled a similarly-stern gaze at him. "I thought it might change your mind," she said.

"It didn't," he replied curtly. "How did you get aboard this ship anyway?"

"I had a change of heart after you left," Tenel Ka explained. "So I made it to one of the shuttles discharging a group of slaves and used Force-speed to enter it, stowing away. I thought now would be a good time to emerge; I figured that it might have taken you this long to take over the ship."

"Right," Jacen said. "And you did nothing to stop the slave trade?"

An awkward silence passed between them. But after a moment, Tenel Ka said, "I came to help you save Jaina and Jagged Fel."

Jacen gave her a wry look. "Well, now that you're here, I guess. Just don't try to pull off that stunt that you just did again, do you understand?"

Tenel Ka nodded reluctantly. "I understand, Jacen."

Jacen sighed. "Listen, Tenel Ka, I know how you must be feeling. You feel alone, unappreciated, and without love for so many years, ruling the Hapes Consortium and all. Believe me, I've had to go through far worse, though in a shorter time." He wasn't sure if there was another being alive in the galaxy who went through the same trials and tribulations that he went under Vergere's tutelage back during his captivity among the Yuuzhan Vong. "But when this is all over, and Jaina and Jag are safe... Well, if they're even alive, that is, we'll have to work out how to deal with the anarchy you caused by leaving the Consortium."

"I am not going back there, Jacen," Tenel Ka said in an authoritative tone. "I want to stay with you."

"Tenel Ka, _no_," Jacen replied as forcefully as he intended. "Don't you get it? I'm happily married to Danni, and nothing's gonna change that."

"You never know what can change, Jacen," Tenel Ka argued. "Did you ever think that you would be the Grand Master of the Jedi Order? You, the same boy who wondered if what the Jedi was even doing during the war was even the right course of action? Did you ever think that you would grow to be the man who would end the war without having to resort to genocide against the Yuuzhan Vong as a solution? You, one of the most uncertain people I've ever known, who had twice achieved enlightenment through the Force, as I have heard, are now one of the most certain people I have ever known, yet how can you even be so certain that your marriage with Danni Quee will last even half as long as the marriage with your parents, or-or the marriage that your aunt and uncle have, or-or... or..." She trailed off as she began crying, allowing herself to back along the wall behind her before sinking to her haunches. There, she began crying against her knees as Jacen sat down next to her and held her, an embrace that she returned with her one arm with nearly crushing force.

"I've been so alone now, Jacen," Tenel Ka muttered. Jacen couldn't help but notice that she had used a contraction when she said that; something very small, but very noticeable to him. "I've been so alone, and I've had no one to talk to or care about or love while the rest of you had been off getting married and being in loving families."

She then looked directly at him with tear-streaked eyes. "Can you help me, Jacen? Please?"

After a moment of hesitation, Jacen nodded. "I will try."

Tenel Ka gave him a sad smile, and practically dove onto him as she hugged him. "Oh, thank you, Jacen. Thank you."

And they just sat like that, with some members of the _Service Sender_'s crew awkwardly watching, but otherwise not doing or saying anything aside from just leaving to continue on with their duties; and Jacen made sure, at the periphery of his senses, that none of them would pull anything stupid, even if it was just so that they could get reduced prison sentences for their crimes.


	15. Chapter 15

With a primitive brown sack over his head, Soontir Fel was dragged into a dark room with a harsh, bright light illuminating the center. His captors, two burly Chiss guards, forcefully sat him down onto a metal chair placed beneath the light before one of the guards quickly lifted the bag off of his head, prompting Fel to raise a hand over his eyes to conceal the light to some degree.

If it weren't for the effectiveness of this interrogation tactic - as Fel assumed that this would be an interrogation - he would have rolled his eyes in annoyance at how clichéd it was. As it was, though, he was at least caught off-guard.

For what little he could make out in the darkness before him, as his eyes adjusted to the stark illumination made by the glaring light above, Fel thought he saw a Chiss male sitting a few feet away. As soon as his eyes did fully adjust, Fel could confirm for himself that it was, in fact, a Chiss, given the red eyes of the individual across from him.

"Soontir Fel," the Chiss said. Fel couldn't help but think that the owner of the deep, bass masculine voice sounded somewhat familiar. "I understand that you have been delving into files restricted to your level of government access. We understand that you are deeply concerned about the whereabouts of your son and daughter-in-law, but did you honestly think that that would not be discovered by us?"

"If you wanted to have me arrested for snooping into restricted files," Fel said, his tone not bearing an iota of being intimidated, "then I would have been arrested. So I think my question would be: Why did you have me taken like you were an organized crime syndicate instead of a legitimate government establishment?"

Fel then saw the eyes move, as if their owner were nodding, and the next thing that the human knew, intense pain bracketed the back of his head, the butt of the rifle of one of the guards behind him knocking him forward and out of the chair. The other guard just as quickly managed to pick Fel off the floor and placed him roughly back in the chair again.

"Ask a question like that again, Fel," the Chiss in the darkness intoned, "and the scope of that guard's rifle will be at the back of your head to put a bolt through your skull."

"Then I don't suppose you mind if I ask this kind of question: What do you want?"

The Chiss in the darkness took a moment to respond, as if he were smiling, Fel thought. "Simply to stop delving into restricted files. It will do us both some good."

"I could see how that might not get me in trouble with the authorities if I cooperated with you," Fel said stoically. But then he smiled. "But tell me, Aristocra Derak'ana'kinai, why so scared as to what I found out so far?"

This time, the Chiss's silence didn't make Fel think that he was smiling.

In a flash, the human already dropped back to the floor to kick the chair that he was just in backward. It knocked the guard who was going to execute him backward; but just as the other guard leveled his own blaster to shoot Fel in the back and fired a charric bolt, the human had already rolled into the darkness. Bare seconds later, the eyes of the Chiss in the darkness had already risen quickly.

By then, the guard who was knocked back had recovered from the blow and turned to flick a switch that not shut off the light hanging above, but managed to illuminate the entire room at a comfortable color temperature.

And both guards found that Fel had Aristocra Derak'ana'kinai, or, as he was known by his core name, Kanak, held right before him. Fel's right arm held Kanak by the Chiss's torso, while the human's other hand was poised to break the Aristocra's neck.

"Fire a shot," he warned the guards, "and even if you successfully hit me in the head, I will break the Aristocra's neck in my death throes and kill him. Now drop your rifles and kick them over."

The guards gave each other a look of anxiety and confusion of what to do before they returned their gazes at Kanak.

"Do it!" the cowardly Chiss commanded.

Hesitantly, and evidently reluctantly, the guards carefully placed their weapons on the floor and promptly kicked them so that the slid over to Fel and Kanak's direction.

Once the rifles stopped sliding along the floor, Fel shoved the Aristocra forward before quickly rolling over to the rifle on his left. Simultaneously, both guards jumped for their rifles, but Fel managed to reach the one that he was rolling for first. By the time he was in a crouching position, the charric rifle was already pointed to both the unarmed and now-armed guard. He took out the unarmed guard first, as he was the one obscuring the armed one, before he took that Chiss out, too.

With both Chiss now dead, Fel almost leisurely stood back up, leveling the rifle up at Kanak, who held his arms up in surrender.

"So, tell me, Kanak," Fel said, "about this little base owned by one Begranda Degrona Jaluub that I don't already know; more specifically, why you're funding that little mining enterprise of his and why you're keeping it such a secret."

Kanak visibly swallowed. "Jaluub is bribing myself and several other Aristocras to allow him that territory and to keep the Ascendancy from branching out there to claim it!" the corrupt Chiss admitted nervously.

"Really? Well, why don't you tell me a little more about what Jaluub is doing there, the names of the Aristocras who fell for this Hutt's bribes, and, if possible, what it might have to do with my son and daughter-in-law's disappearances?"

.

Begranda watched in satisfaction as the attractive Chagrian woman on the stage of Dev'lia's Dirties danced seductively, and in the nude, for the pleasure of the cantina's crowd. When she was finished, the dancer's performance was met with as much drunken applause as there were semen ejaculations slicking the floors and tables of the bar; naturally, there were always little cleaner mouse droids washing away the multi-species gunk away, and, of course, the droids themselves were equipped with self-cleaning units for when semen and other sexual fluids were incidentally shot toward them.

For his part, Begranda simply clapped; he did not have as much sexual gratification from watching a humanoid dance seductively as a Hutt such as Jabba Desilijic Tiure would have, though, buried deep in his subconscious, there was a part of Begranda that understood why someone like Jabba would find this enticing.

Sitting beside him, Dev'lia also clapped, though Begranda couldn't help but notice that the Bothan had a sizable erection protruding from his trousers. Still, the Hutt kept to himself, as he found it commendable that Dev'lia was restraining himself this much just for appearances; and since Begranda dealt with businesses based around appearances, such as the attractive appearances of dancers like that Chagrian, there was neither harm nor foul in noticing Dev'lia's erection.

"I must say, Dev'lia, my good man," Begranda said to the Bothan, "you have fulfilled my expectations on re-establishing the Dirties and then some, and not just in terms of profits. I can say you are making quite a popular entertainment medium around here."

Dev'lia shrugged, as if in modesty. "Everyone loves good entertainment, Your Majesty," the Bothan replied with a smile.

Begranda laughed a hearty, friendly chuckle that Dev'lia shared. "Keep this up, my man," the Hutt said, "and I'm thinking that we can take this to other sectors that may one day be owned by me. The Dirties will be a success as an industry in and of itself!"

Dev'lia looked at Begranda with what amounted to excitement. "That would be an excellent idea, sir!"

But before either could say anymore, Begranda's stoic Zabrak bodyguard leaned in beside the Hutt and said, "Excuse me, Your Majesty. But you have a call waiting from both C-Ice and D-City."

Begranda's good-natured attitude all but vanished to be quickly replaced by the purely businesslike, objective persona that he adopted for times like these. He looked back to Dev'lia and said, "Excuse me, my friend. I must take this. You may return to your duties as necessary."

Dev'lia nodded wordlessly and stood up to return to his office just as Begranda followed Lasaunge to a secret room at the back of the bar. Lasaunge, after giving Begranda the commlink on which he would commence the call, allowed his superior inside and closed the door behind the Hutt.

As soon as that happened, Begranda completely opened up the communication between his contacts on Csilla (codenamed C-Ice) and Denon (D-City), both of whom were represented by holographic projections showing them to be mere inches instead of their real-life sizes.

"What is the matter on C-Ice?" the Hutt asked them.

"I have troubling news that I thought deserved to be brought to your attention, Your Majesty," the Csilla contact said. She was an elderly Chiss woman, an Aristocra whom Begranda managed to buy out in secret and whose core name - Begranda never could remember full Chiss names anyway - was Janag.

"Go ahead," Begranda told the Chiss.

"Aristocra Kanak has gone missing, and we think that Baron Soontir Fel, who is similarly absent, may have had something to do with it," Janag explained.

"And you believe that this is troubling to our cause?" Begranda asked.

Janag nodded. "Especially since Fel has been investigating the disappearances of his son and daughter-in-law, Jagged and Jaina Fel respectively."

"I see," Begranda said in a controlled tone. This might be worrying after all, he thought. "Are there any clues as to Aristocra Kanak and Baron Fel's whereabouts right now?"

Janag shook her head this time. "We will let you know when we can."

Begranda then shifted his attention to his contact on Denon, hoping for some good news. "And what of D-City?" the Hutt asked.

"To inform you, Your Majesty," the male Chadra-Fan said, "there has been a recent investigation done on the parts of both acting Jedi Grand Master Hamner and Alliance of the Galaxy Chief of Staff Dorvan about the possibility that there might have been an inside job when it came to the disappearances of the sex criminals."

Begranda knew that Hamner and Dorvan's suspicions weren't unfounded; Begranda had help from the information provided by the Chadra-Fan contact, whose name remained anonymous even to Begranda, that allowed the Hutt to know where the ship carrying Dev'lia and his associates would be. Having that AG ship not carrying any of the criminals was a minor blunder, at most, but it did, unfortunately, give reason for the AG to be more suspicious about their disappearances had only that Hapan shuttle been compromised; otherwise, it would have lessened AG support into the more heavy Hapan investigation.

"And with the Hapes Consortium in utter chaos and the AG and the Jedi diverting resources there," the Chadra-Fan continued, "we think that now would be a good time to strike at the foundations of both the Jedi and the AG leadership."

"I imagine that trying to attack the Jedi would be even more difficult than attacking Cal Omas or Wynn Dorvan," Begranda commented.

"It would be," the Chadra-Fan said. "But, tell me, Your Majesty, have you ever heard of taozin?"

Begranda tilted his massive head in thought. "I have heard of them. Are they not an extinct species whose presence do not so much nullify a Jedi's powers so much as works around them, such as an invisibility cloak that the Imperials tried by the end of the Galactic Civil War?"

"The taozin are endangered, not extinct, if you will pardon me," the Chadra-Fan corrected. "Thanks to some recently-discovered worlds in Wild Space made by some privateers looking for a quick buck. Cloning is, thankfully, cheap these days."

Begranda grinned at what the Denon contact was implying.


	16. Chapter 16

In one of the lower levels of Denon's Jedi Temple, a red-skinned female Twi'lek relied as much on her conspicuous persona to avoid being noticed by any Jedi as the taozin pheromones that allowed every Jedi's Force-probing to overlook her presence.

Through her anonymous Chadra-Fan contact, she had not only been provided with a dose of the pheromones that, at this point, should last for another two hours or so, but the Twi'lek was also provided with a backpack containing a lightweight, tactical nuclear device, something that engineers on Corulag had managed to invent and sell on the black market recently; thankfully, it had a degree switch so that the Twi'lek had primed the bomb not to destroy the city in which the Temple was located, but just enough to destroy the Temple itself.

Now that she was down here, the Twi'lek looked around for a maintenance closet, which she found after a few minutes, and, after making sure that no one was around in the nearly-deserted corridors, bent down at the locked door, took off her backpack, removed the lightweight nuke that was nothing more than the size and width of her hand, pressed a button beneath it to activate it, and slid the machine beneath the door.

As that happened, tiny suction cups sprang from the end of the device facing the bottom of the door, wielding it there. A second later, the hour-long countdown to its detonation began.

Without hesitation, the Twi'lek turned and began heading back the way she came for the nearest turbolift that would take her to the Temple's hangar bay, confident that, since the nuke itself was also coated in taozin pheromones, none of the Jedi in the Temple would be able to sense their impending doom as it ticked down in time.

.

Alliance of the Galaxy Chief of State Cal Omas sighed and rubbed his temples in frustration as he sat staring down in the reflection on his office desk, wondering just how many more resources he could spare his government's military to try to re-establish social and political stability in the Transitory Mists. Hopefully, this new meeting that Jacen Solo, still on leave to try to find his missing sister and brother-in-law, had called for via commlink might be able to clear things up; the temporarily-suspended Grand Master of the Jedi promised that he would tell Omas, Chief of Staff Wynn Dorvan, and Acting Grand Master Hamner something that might absolve the AG of some responsibility regarding the chaos in the Hapes Consortium.

Omas checked the time on his wrist chrono and saw that it was almost time for Dorvan and Hamner to enter his office to commence the meeting, with Solo entering the discussion via hologram. So the Chief of State reached over across his desk to press the button that would raise Solo's holocomm signal.

And just as the blue-tinted form of the temporarily-suspended Grand Master appeared, the door to Omas's office opened to admit Chief of Staff Wynn Dorvan inside.

Yet Acting Grand Master Hamner was absent. Was he late? Omas wondered.

"Chief Omas!" Dorvan called. Omas now noticed that his Chief of Staff was now looking kind of worried. "We have to evacuate the building!"

Omas looked from Dorvan back to the holographic Solo in concern. "I'll have to call you back later, Master Solo," he said, then shut off the communication to rise from his chair and follow Dorvan out the door.

"What is it?" Omas asked Dorvan.

"Acting Grand Master Hamner has just discovered, with his Force-senses, that there's a bomb beneath the structure of this building capable of reducing it to rubble," Dorvan answered as calmly as he could as he, Omas, and a troop of guards led the Chiefs of State and Staff toward an emergency staircase in the outside corridor. "At this moment, he's trying to disarm it."

"Well, that at least explains why he's late," Omas muttered to himself, trying vainly to calm himself of the mortal danger he now realized himself to be in.

.

Something wasn't right.

While Jedi Knight Nelani Dinn couldn't sense anything truly amiss from her quarters in the Jedi Temple, a growing sense of unease was still propagating itself somewhere in the recesses of her mind. And that might have been that she had just emerged from an extensive meditation session, in which she felt all the nuances of the surrounding environment through the Force; an environment that was typically peaceful, and in a harmonious state, as if in stark contrast to the violence commencing in the rest of the galaxy.

But now there was something that wasn't so much disturbing the peace of the Temple as it was... mitigating, as if it were somehow separate from it. It wasn't as distinct as outright violence or even the subtler undercurrent of malicious intent, nor was it altogether outside the Force, as Nelani had experienced when she and Master Solo had visited Vongformed Coruscant during their search for Garis Boric; but it was there, like a drop of undetectable poison in a drink that an autopsy wouldn't be able to discover to be the cause of the drinker's subsequent death. But somehow, whatever was creating this feeling, Nelani knew that by meditating with the Unifying Force as her guide, she was able to sense this poison that would normally be undetectable, and she delved deeper into the Force to find out what it was.

Soon, she was able to zone in on where the feeling was coming from; in one of the Temple's sublevels. So, keeping that hold on where this feeling was even as her eyes snapped open, Nelani stood up from her meditation mat and headed out the door of her quarters.

Following a brief ride down to the sublevel where she felt this Force-mitigation, she felt herself getting ever closer and closer to the eddy that didn't feel disturbing so much as unformed. Then, as if her sense was spiking like an old-fashioned metal detector finding what it was meant to look for, she discovered where it was: beneath this maintenance closet's door.

With the clearance code that she tapped on the touchpad beside the door, the door slid up and open, and when Nelani stepped into the threshold to look up, her eyes widened as she saw a hand-sized device with a timer on it reading 00:00:15 and counting down from that.

Nelani shunted all questions about this device from her mind; what she knew, or at least figured, was that this device was clearly a bomb, and with less than fifteen seconds to neutralize it before it did any damage, she knew that she had to try do something.

Calming herself from her panic, she realized what she had to do; at seven seconds, she closed her eyes and applied the Aing-Tii teleportation technique onto the device, sending it out to the edge of the Denon system.

Four seconds later, the bomb issued a soundless, building-sized explosion within the furthest reaches of Denon's space, though it wouldn't be noticed by several of the planet's news stations because of the explosion that had simultaneously destroyed the Alliance of the Galaxy Capital Building.


	17. Chapter 17

From the perch of one of Denon's skyline viewer rows, Lerok the Chadra-Fan looked in half-satisfaction and half-concern as he saw that while the Alliance of the Capital Building was no more, the mansion-like Jedi Temple remained.

Turning away, as many in the viewer row were doing now in order to take out their commlinks and contact whoever they wanted to contact about the AG Capital Building's destruction, Lerok did the same to contact the Twi'lek who was supposed to have set the bomb that was to destroy the Jedi Temple.

"Jeeshaw," the Chadra-Fan spoke, "tell me why the Jedi Temple is still standing!" He didn't have to worry about his words, or the words of the Twi'lek on the other line, being heard by anyone around him, since everyone else in the skyline viewer row were too preoccupied with talking and listening to whoever they were now talking to about the AG Building's destruction. He even made sure that the line that he was speaking to the Twi'lek on was encrypted with military-grade anti-sensor equipment, as provided by his backers in the Chiss Ascendency, as he had no doubt that in the event of the AG Building's destruction, the military was now listening in on all channels going to and from Denon right now.

"I don't know why!" Jeeshaw the Twi'lek replied nervously. "I set the bomb and placed it where no one would find it!"

"The Jedi must have found it somehow," Lerok muttered more to himself than to Jeeshaw. "But how? I made sure that the bomb was coated with the taozin pheromones just as you were; they could have never sensed the danger posed by that nuke through the Force! Are you _sure_ no one else saw you wherever you put that bomb?"

"I'm absolutely sure," Jeeshaw said, though her tone still wasn't confident. "I even made sure that the security vidcams had been given that looping program to make it look like I wasn't even there."

Lerok growled. "I'll send someone else to find out why this didn't work; your return might be too recognizable. In the meantime, I have to get back to work. Lerok over and out." He then shut off the communication and headed off, the humiliation of the Jedi Temple still standing overcoming the triumph he should have felt at the AG Capital Building's demise.

Over an hour later, when Lerok returned to work, he was back in his AG military uniform, on the bridge of the Star Destroyer that he served aboard in orbit over Denon.

"Thanks for returning back from your shore leave so soon, Lieutenant Lerok," the Chadra-Fan's commanding officer, a dark-skinned human woman, said as they saluted each other.

"I figured that given these circumstances, Captain," Lerok replied, "it was prudent that I return to active duty this soon."

The captain nodded and returned to her duties, just as Lerok did. And the Chadra-Fan knew that, first opportunity he got, he didn't have much in the way of good news in telling Begranda or Janag.

.

As media representatives, average citizens, and the entirety of the Jedi on Denon alike crowded around the smoking ruins of the demolished Alliance of the Galaxy Capital Building in worry, Jedi Masters Corran Horn and Saba Sebatyne used their Force-abilities to remove debris and deposit the remains in nearby disposal trucks - vehicles sent here for purposes like these - to find their acting Grand Master.

When they did, they found the badly bruised and bloodied form of Kenth Hamner laying in the depths of the wreckage. Together, Corran and Saba joined minds and assisted each other as they lifted Hamner's body out of the ruins and onto a waiting hoverstretcher.

"He's still alive," Corran told the attending paramedics, "but he's in critical condition." Like the other Jedi with him, Corran could sense Hamner's faint presence still among the living, and the paramedics understood this, as they were told beforehand how the Jedi even knew that the acting Grand Master was still alive to begin with.

When one of the paramedics had asked Corran how he and the other Jedi knew this to start, he had told them, "He must have used a Force-bubble to shield himself from the majority of the blast."

Now, he told them, with urgency, "Take him to a hospital right now."

The paramedics nodded and turned to rush off with the Hamner-occupied hoverstretcher to their hovertruck. As soon as the stretcher was loaded in with the paramedics and the unconscious acting Grand Master, the truck sped off into the air for the nearest hospital.

.

"Before he managed to make the Force-bubble to shield himself," Corran said, "Acting Grand Master Hamner managed to use the Aing-Tii teleportation method to transport Chief of State Omas, Chief of Staff Dorvan, and everyone else out of the building and into the hangar bay of the Jedi Temple."

In the quarters given to him by Captain Udono (albeit reluctantly) aboard the _Service Sender_, Jacen listened to the holographic projection of Corran Horn with great worry from the events that just transpired on Denon, which included the plot to destroy the Jedi Temple that Nelani had foiled. Seated in one of the quarters' lounge chairs, Jacen had placed his holotransmitter on the table before him to hear what the miniature Corran had to tell him. However, as much as he was worried about Hamner's current state, Jacen couldn't help but feel proud that even someone as Hamner had decided to try to learn other Force-techniques, such as that of Aing-Tii teleportation.

"Are Omas and the others all alright?" Jacen asked.

"All startled by what happened, but they are fine, Master Solo," Corran confirmed evenly. "Omas and Dorvan have both been relocated to safehouses until the cause of the AG Building's destruction has been determined."

"Has there been any word about Master Hamner's state since?"

Corran shook his head. "He's still in critical."

Jacen sighed. "Alright. Master Horn, are you willing to take on the role of acting Grand Master until either Master Hamner recovers or until I return?"

Corran's eyes widened in shock at what he was being asked to do. "Um... uh, yes, yes, I am, Master Solo. I can take Master Hamner's place in the meanwhile."

"Good," Jacen replied. "You can have this message recorded to let the rest of the Council know about this, as well as Chiefs Omas and Dorvan. And you can tell them, as well, that what I had to tell them can wait, given the circumstances."

Corran looked confused. "If I may, what was it that you were going to tell them that had warranted Master Hamner's presence in the AG Building, instead of by commlink as you did?"

"It has to do with the Hapes Consortium," Jacen said.

Corran's eyes widened in shock yet again. "Would you like to tell me so that I can pass this information off to Chiefs Omas and Dorvan?"

Jacen nodded. "Might as well. Tenel Ka had abandoned her post as Queen Mother, and is currently travelling with me to the Unknown Regions to help me find my sister and brother-in-law."

"Why?" Corran asked.

"It's a long story I'd rather not get into right now," Jacen replied.

"Well, at least that solves what happened to Tenel Ka," Corran said. "But how is this going to help ease the situation in the Consortium?"

"I might be able to convince Tenel Ka to return to her duties," Jacen said. "That is, after I save my sister and brother-in-law."

"Why can't Tenel Ka return now?"

"We're not exactly in a good position for Tenel Ka to return to the Transitory Mists yet," Jacen answered. "I'd be happy to get Tenel Ka off my hands so I can save Jaina and Jag by myself, but as it is, she's stuck with me, and I can't leave now anyway; this might be my only shot at finding Jaina, at least, and I can't throw it away, even if it means letting the Consortium continue to die."

Corran grimaced. "Omas and Dorvan aren't exactly gonna wanna hear that, Jacen."

"Well, they should at least know about Tenel Ka's whereabouts anyway," Jacen said.

"I hope you know what you're doing, Master Solo."

"So do I, Corran."


	18. Chapter 18

As soon as Jacen closed out his communication with Corran, he sat back and sighed in frustration; he now fell into contemplation as to what the ramifications would be for choosing to save Jaina and Jag as his first priority over helping the Hapes Consortium. Even ignoring the possibility that Omas might court-martial him or something for not immediately intervening on the interstellar crisis that was now occurring in the Transitory Mists, Jacen still felt guilty for deciding to save two people, if not one, over an entire sector of space.

Idly, he looked over to one of the viewports of his quarters and saw that the _Service Sender_ had now dropped out of hyperspace, probably to do a course correction. He was about to look back at the spot on the wall that he chose to stare at when he did a double-take and saw the form of a Hapan Battle Dragon waiting there at the viewport.

He quickly pushed himself to his feet and headed over to that viewport to find that there was an entire fleet of Battle Dragons there!

Turning, he dashed out of his quarters and headed for the _Sender_'s bridge. By the time he got there, Captain Udono was already at a communications console, leaning over his communications crewman, saying, "Well, I'm sorry, Ducha Lorangal, but we have no more men to sell at the moment. We are on our way to pick up some more right now."

Lorangal! The woman who Udono claimed had kidnaped Jag, Jacen thought, and the vigilante going after Dev'lia and his associates.

"What a shame," the female Hapan voice on the other end of the line said. "I was getting tired with a few of the men here. Oh, well, I guess I'll just have to do with them a little while longer, Captain Udono."

As the Hapan voice spoke, Udono had turned to see Jacen standing there and the Rodian's bug-like eyes widened. In response, Jacen narrowed his own eyes, silenty telling the captain to turn back and try to stall Lorangal and her fleet from departing the system that they were now in.

Just as Lorangal had finished talking, Udono had already turned back and stammered, "Uh, well, uh, actually, one of my crew just told me that we seem to have a... a... uh... a stowaway aboard, and we just caught him, and he looks like quite a fit man by human and Hapan standards! Would you like to buy him from us?"

There was a long pause coming from the other end, and Udono stood there nervously, looking back and forth between Jacen and the station communicating Lorangal's voice until the latter finally spoke up.

"Very well. Name your price."

Udono sighed in relief, and Jacen grinned in satisfaction.

"Fifteen hundred credits," Udono said. "Would you like us to send him over for you, or would you like to come aboard the _Service Sender_?"

"I think I would like to come aboard," Lorangal said almost flatly.

"Very well," Udono said even more nervously than usual. "We'll have him readied for you, ma'am."

Without even saying goodbye, the line was cut off from the other end. And just as that click sounded, Udono turned back and rushed over to Jacen, crying, "By the gods, by the gods, by the gods, she's going to kill us all!" He stopped just a few feet from Jacen as he finished.

"Why?" Jacen asked.

"When I traded with her," Udono explained in a panic, "she asked for me to send the men I had aboard her ship, and she explicitly told me that it's because she likes to make trades on her turf, or something along those lines."

Taking in Udono's words, Jacen looked past the Rodian and sensed the now-incoming ship that had discharged from one of the Battle Dragons.

"I think you may be right," he told the captain. "My Force-sense is telling me that there's something sinister approaching; I think it might mean that it means to kill you."

"Like a bomb?" one of Udono's crewmen asked in horror.

"Most likely," Jacen answered stoically.

"My sensors are reading that there are some female Hapans aboard," another crewman said.

"Your sensors are wrong," Jacen denied. "It's a deliberate computer-programming ruse."

"How are you so sure you're not the one who's wrong?" the same crewman asked.

One stare from Jacen shut that crewman up.

"Oh, why would she do this?" yet another crewman asked in horror.

"Probably because of the way your captain stammered with his stowaway story," Jacen replied, looking directly back at Udono.

"Oh, like this is all my fault!" Udono argued; for the first time in Jacen's encounters with him, the Rodian was showing some spine, even if now wasn't the appropriate times (as if there were any appropriate times for Udono to argue like this to Jacen, given his line of work). "If you had just allowed me to say my farewells to Lorangal, we-"

Jacen cut him off by grabbing the collar of his tunic and pulling him closer, much to the now-alert responses of the bridge's crew.

"That woman has my brother-in-law," Jacen growled. "And I'm going to save him."

"B-but the bomb-" Udono stammered.

"Leave that to me," Jacen said as he released his grip on the Rodian's collar.

The Grand Master then shut his eyes and concentrated as he sent a pulse of the Force toward the shuttle containing the bomb meant to destroy the _Service Sender_. Once he felt that the bomb was disabled, he opened his eyes and grinned again.

"Your ship is safe now," Jacen said.

"Okay, but how will Lorangal respond when she finds that her bomb didn't go off?" Udono inquired.

"Again, leave that to me," Jacen said with a raised eyebrow.

He then turned to leave the bridge, only to stop before he took a step to find Tenel Ka standing at the threshold to the bridge.

"If you want me to start picking up on my duties, Jacen," she said, "I might as well show her what leaving behind the Consortium means to her Queen Mother."


	19. Chapter 19

Lorangal stared out through the viewport of her Battle Dragon's bridge as she wondered why the Dreadnaught ahead hadn't exploded from the bomb that she had sent; while it would have been a shame to have lost Captain Udono as a source of deliveries for sex slaves, she felt that she could risk it, as she didn't much care for the Rodian's tone when he stuttered like a liar would. That, and the fact that she could just find another source to get sex slaves from in the future.

So why wasn't the bomb going off? It was set to explode as soon as it had entered the Dreadnaught's hangar bay.

Before the Ducha could ask one of her bridge crew about this, she suddenly felt the pressure of a very strong arm across her chest, with something sharp pressing against the side of her neck. Simultaneously, Lorangal heard a distinctive _snap-hiss!_ issue even further behind; and all the while, everyone else on the bridge either sat up or stood straight in alertness at their Ducha.

"Hello, Ducha Lorangal," the voice of Tenel Ka Djo said from behind. "I am surprised that you did not return to the Hapes Consortium to try to claim the throne."

"Your Majesty!" Lorangal replied, sounding more flustered than she actually was. "Tell me, how did you get aboard this ship and onto the bridge without sounding off any of the alarms?" With a minor hand gesture, which the Ducha correctly predicted would only get whatever sharp implement that Tenel Ka had on her neck just a little closer to breaking the skin and drawing blood, Lorangal then felt the slight weight of her defensive device now in hand.

"Do not even think about moving another muscle, you treacherous wench!" Tenel Ka growled.

"_I_ am treacherous?" Lorangal asked, if only to throw Tenel Ka slightly off-guard. "This coming from the woman who abandoned the Consortium and left it to wither in anarchy?" She had no idea whether or not Tenel Ka had actually abandoned the Consortium; she was just making a guess.

Apparently, it worked, as Lorangal felt the pressure of whatever Tenel Ka was holding against the Ducha's neck decrease, as if the Queen Mother had her resolve weakened by hearing a bitter truth; so Tenel Ka _did_ leave the Consortium of her own free will, Lorangal thought.

Of course, she only thought that after she broke out of Tenel Ka's grip, flinging the Jedi slightly back before pressing the button of her defensive device. Immediately, the plasma-like energy field erected around Lorangal, protecting her from all external harm.

Just as Lorangal had her ray shield activated, she had turned around to find that Tenel Ka had just activated the green blade of her rancor toothed-hilted lightsaber - the source of what she pressed against Lorangal's neck - and joined a brown-haired human male Jedi right beside her, who also wielded a green-bladed lightsaber, as they began deflecting blaster bolts being fired by various members of the bridge crew.

Lorangal didn't know or care who the other Jedi was, and all thoughts about how the two of them managed to make it not only aboard her Battle Dragon but also her aboard her bridge had vanished; her only intent now was to rush out of the bridge, running past Tenel Ka and her accomplice, and get to an escape pod for one of the other Battle Dragons in her fleet.

"Milady, what is wrong?" was one of the questions that several soldiers out in the corridor that Lorangal now ran through had asked. The Ducha didn't bother to answer any of them, but they nevertheless fell into step with her, ever loyal to Lorangal as the Ducha herself was not to Tenel Ka.

By the time Lorangal got to the section of the corridor where the escape pods were, she turned at the sound of her bridge's door opening, seeing past her accompanying soldiers to Tenel Ka and the other Jedi rushing out, having most likely dispatched with her Battle Dragon's bridge crew.

The soldiers now with Lorangal began opening fire upon the rapidly-approaching Jedi before the Ducha could issue the order to do so. That left her with just a little bit more time to turn back and open up the door to the escape pod that she had arrived to before stepping inside. She sealed it out and away from the soldiers who now dwindled from being slaughtered by Tenel Ka and her companion.

Once Tenel Ka and the other Jedi had arrived where Lorangal had opened the escape pod door, the Ducha herself had already launched the pod that she was now in into space and on a trajectory for one of the other Battle Dragons.

"Commander Yerlof," Lorangal said as soon as she had opened a line to her subordinate commander, "open fire on my personal Battle Dragon when ready; the lives of the remaining crew aboard are void."

Without even a second's hesitation (again, something that Lorangal admired in her fleet's loyalty to her), Yerlof replied with, "Yes, ma'am."

And just like that, the rotating turbolaser banks of several of the Battle Dragons began their fiery rounds upon Lorangal's personal vessel.

.

"Stay here!" Jacen shouted at Tenel Ka as the Battle Dragon they were aboard rocked from the turbolaser fire pounding it. "We'll need to get Jag out of here first!"

"Why not just teleport him over here with us?" Tenel Ka asked, balancing herself in the midst of all the rocking as she and Jacen deactivated their lightsabers and hooked them back onto their belts.

"Not so soon after that teleportation that got us aboard," Jacen hurriedly explained. "I'll have to find him by locating his Force-presence; you just make sure we still have an escape pod to escape to!"

And without another word, Jacen turned and hurried down the Battle Dragon's corridors to find Jag; none of the Battle Dragon's crew paid him any attention, as they were simply scrambling to survive, even if they weren't actively trying to get to an escape pod.

Soon, Jacen threw out a small Force-wave to the entrance of an emergency stairwell ahead, where he flashed through the threshold and leaped over the railing to descend a few levels. He landed in a duck-and-roll and hopped back up to his feet to kick open the door to this level, where he sensed Jag to be.

After passing by a few doors, and nearly falling to the deck from all the shakes that the Battle Dragon was enduring from her attacking brethren, Jacen finally made it to the door where he sensed Jag to be inside. He quickly broke down the door with yet another minor Force-wave, and just as quickly stepped in to find a nude Jag huddling on the deck of a dimly-lit room with other naked, and quite muscular, human and Hapan men, all of whom looked scared and confused as to why the ship was shaking; even the typically-stoic Jag looked as frightened as if he were a regular Coruscanti citizen instead of a hard-trained, Chiss-raised military man.

Momentarily startled by what he saw, Jacen shook his head to recover his senses and called out, "Come on! We have to get out! We don't have much time!"

"This way, men!" Jag called as he stood up and ran toward Jacen.

Hesitantly, all of the other naked men followed suit as they trailed Jacen and Jag out the door.

Given the embattling circumstances, not a single one of them said anything to each other until they returned to where Tenel Ka was waiting for them at the escape pod.

There, her rancor-toothed lightsaber was lit and she stood around a circle of the bodies of various Hapan soldiers around her, all of whom had no doubt tried to get past her to get to the escape pod that she guarded. However, her steely resolve in the face of the violence she had dished out between Jacen departing to find Jag and now wavered when she Jacen come back with the nude forms of Jag and Lorangal's other sex slaves.

"This is how I found them, I swear," Jacen said to Tenel Ka.

Without acknowledging Jacen, Tenel Ka turned and opened the door to the escape pod, wordlessly waving the nude men and Jacen in before being the last one inside. Once that happened, she sealed the pod away from the rest of the dying Battle Dragon and launched it into space.

.

While the attacked Battle Dragon had several of her own turbolasers vainly open fire on her turncoat brethren, it also launched many of its own escape pods.

When Lorangal saw this happen, she growled and reopened her channel with Yerlof. "Commander, do you have a reading on my escape pod?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Then open fire on the rest. Make sure that none of them survive or board any of the other Battle Dragons."

"Understood, Milady."

The attacking Battle Dragons then spread out their fire to encompass the space in which the escape pods floundered, creating mini-explosions as if in prelude to the inevitable and explosive death that Lorangal's personal Battle Dragon would face.

And Lorangal watched in both anticipation and anxiety, hoping against hope that one of those escape pods contained Tenel Ka and her male Jedi friend.

"Milady!" Yerlof's slightly panicked voice returned.

"What is it?" Lorangal asked impatiently.

"Something is wrong with our scanners!" Yerlof replied. "We can still pick up your signal, but we can't seem to pick up the signals of any of the other escape pods!"

Lorangal's first impulse was to ask how that was a problem when her signal was still being picked up and if it was really a problem when they could still fire on the other pods by regular sight; but as soon as she thought about it, she asked herself, _Why is only _my _escape pod being detected?_

And that was when Lorangal's panic rose drastically; it must have something to do with Tenel Ka and her friend! They _want_ her to make it out of this for some reason. But why?

Or maybe it was that they were somehow pulling this off - possibly with the use of that dreaded Force of the Jedi's - just so that she would have this reaction?

Well, one thing was for certain; she would feel a lot safer in the hangar bay of one of her Battle Dragons instead of an open field of space where escape pods were being blasted into atoms and molecules, even if her pod was specifically deemed to be outside the kill-zone, and even if Tenel Ka and her friend would be there to slice her head off with one of their lightsabers.

So Lorangal plotted the pod to head on over to Commander Yerlof's Battle Dragon, and in less than a minute, it had set down on that warship's hangar deck, where a crew of soldiers waited.

The pod opened to admit Lorangal out into the Battle Dragon's hangar bay, where she told them, "Take me to the bridge now." And they wordlessly complied with her order.

.

In the midst of the destruction of Ducha Lorangal's Battle Dragon, nearly all of the ship's escape pods, and all of her crew, the _Service Sender_ had taken advantage of the distraction to jump into hyperspace.

But not before admitting the escape pod containing Jacen, Tenel Ka, and their naked charges.

Captain Udono was there with a crew of bodyguards at his side - bodyguards that Jacen knew he could easily wipe out even without Tenel Ka's help - as the Jedi and the nude men climbed out of the escape pod and onto the deck of the _Sender_'s hangar bay.

At the startled and angry looks by the men, directed at Udono for selling them to Lorangal, Jacen stood in front of them, blocking their way from attacking the Rodian; if not for Udono himself, then at least so that none of them would be hurt by the blaster bolts that could be fired at the captain's guards, as Jacen knew that even he would be hard-pressed to stop them all in time; again, even with Tenel Ka at his side.

And whatever contributed to less violence, so long as it wasn't necessary, was always a plus in Jacen's book.

"Relax, gentlemen," Jacen said to Jag and his fellow freed sex slaves. "He's with me; come to think of it, I'm actually surprised that he didn't bale out while we were all still aboard the Battle Dragon." He looked back at Udono.

"Well, you did save my ship from being destroyed," the Rodian said. "So I felt like I owed you a debt of gratitude and-"

"Save it," Jacen said. "You're still going to prison."

At that, Udono went silent.

"He's with _you_?!" Jag asked in angry shock. "How could you even associate yourself with this bastard, Jacen?!"

"He'll get his due," Jacen replied stoically, waving dismissively back at Udono. "Until then, he's our only chance of saving Jaina and anyone else that Dev'lia might be harming and killing right now."

At this, Jag stopped, and spread out his arms to make sure that none of the other men disobeyed Jacen's order. Seeing their fellow's reaction, they all stood down, as if in obedience.

"She's still alive?" Jag asked Jacen.

Jacen nodded. "While I can't exactly feel it, as there seems to be some kind of separation, I know that Jaina is alive; but I doubt she's alright if she's under Dev'lia's control."

Jag looked past the Grand Master to level a hateful gaze at Udono. "How _could you_ sell my wife to the hands of that sick freak?!"

Jacen turned and levelled a stern finger up at the Rodian before the latter could speak. "You shut up; you're in enough hot water as it is. Now make yourself useful and get these men into some temporary quarters... and some good clothes."

Udono nodded wordlessly, afraid to speak, and repeated the nod to his guards, who moved forward to escort the men.

"Now wait a minute," Jag said, stopping the guards in their tracks as he returned his attention to Jacen. "You didn't tell us why you scrambled those Battle Dragons' sensors through the Force to let Lorangal get away."

"It was not the time for Ducha Lorangal to die," Tenel Ka said, piping in for Jacen. "She will face punishment, but in a Hapan court, not through a quick death."

Jag and the other men looked at her in shock. "So you just let her get away? How do you even know you'll get the chance to catch her again?"

"Because she's also going after Dev'lia," Jacen explained. "And if that's so, we can defeat her, the sick freak, and any and all of their associates along with saving Jaina in one fell swoop."

Jag seemed to calm down for a moment, only to then ask, "Wait, how are we going to catch them all? With just the crew of this one Dreadnaught?"

"Who said we were going to just catch them?" Jacen asked. "They might all die, for all we know; we're counting on Lorangal's fleet to arrive ahead of us to create a battle over wherever Dev'lia and Jaina are. Only then might Lorangal, Dev'lia, and the latter's associates all be brought down one way or another."

"You'd be risking Jaina's life then!" Jag pointed out.

"Not if I can help it," Jacen replied.

Jag sighed. "Okay, but how do you even know if Lorangal's fleet will arrive ahead of the Dreadnaught? Does she even know where she's going?"

"She does now," Jacen answered. "Because just before I teleported Tenel Ka and myself over to her Battle Dragon, I had Captain Udono order his crew to program the coordinates to where he sold Jaina to into the computer banks of all her Battle Dragons."

Udono seemed to beam with pride, only to be shot back down into sober misery at the stares of the angry naked men.

.

"Milady," Commander Yerlof said as soon as Lorangal entered the Battle Dragon's bridge, "the Dreadnaught got away before we could fix our fire onto the slavers' ship."

"Have all the escape pods been destroyed?" Lorangal asked straightforwardly.

"All but two, Milady," Yerlof replied stoically. "Yours, and one that had boarded the _Service Sender_, as we discovered as soon as we had our sensors working again."

"That must have been the one containing Tenel Ka and her Jedi friend," Lorangal growled more to herself than Yerlof.

"However, as soon as we had recovered our sensors," Yerlof continued, "we also found something in our computers that I thought I should share with you."

Yerlof then guided Lorangal and her retinue of guards to one of the bridge's computer stations; and on the screen of one of them was a set of coordinates followed by a message written in Basic.

The message read: **WANT TO FIND DEV'LIA QUICKER?**

Lorangal looked at both the coordinates and message in confusion. "Why would that treacherous Rodian want us to find Dev'lia after we just tried to kill him?"

"I... do not know, Milady," Yerlof responded nervously. "Should we ignore it?"

Lorangal placed a hand beneath her chin in thought.

After a moment, she looked at Yerlof and said, "If this is our best chance at finding Dev'lia, I will take it, even if the source is rather questionable in terms of trust."

"As you wish, Milady," Yerlof responded uncertainly now. She then turned to order a crew member to program the coordinates that would finally bring the fleet to Dev'lia.


	20. Chapter 20

In an alley in Cshanalla, an elderly Chiss couple were walking past when they stopped at the sound of muffled screams coming from the alley's closed dumpster.

"Geroh, that sounds like someone is trapped in there," the female Chiss said, directing her husband's attention to the dumpster by pointing at it. "We should help."

"I will take care of it, you stand back, Jero," Geroh the husband said.

He then left his wife at the threshold of the alley as he warily approached the dumpster. When he finally opened it, wondering what he would find, his eyes widened at the site of a tied and gagged Aristocra Kanak writhing around in the garbage. Kanak stopped and mumbled an indication for Geroh to have the gag removed from his mouth.

When Geroh complied, Kanak said, "Thank you, citizen! Now, please, help me out of here! I need to return to the Ruling Council! Baron Fel and his entire family must pay for what he has done!"

.

Less than an hour after he had deposited the tied and gagged Kanak into that dumpster, Soontir Fel had already managed to return to his family's apartment, where he had hurriedly told his wife and daughter, Syal and Wynssa respectively, that they were in danger and that they had to leave Csilla immediately. The two women having the utmost trust in their husband and father, they complied without argument, knowing that they would get an explanation as soon as they had the first opportunity.

By the time Kanak was discovered, Fel already had himself and his family on a hyperdrive-equipped shuttle that had left Csilla's atmosphere. Before the y left the system, however, he had surpassed the planet's Orbital Control by telling the operator on the other line that he was on a scheduled vacation with his family for the Core, which they were; Fel had scheduled one long before he had Kanak placed in that dumpster. And since Kanak's associates in the Ruling Council could not afford to place Fel or his family on the wanted list out of suspicion from those Council members who weren't corrupt, Fel had been free to do as he wished.

Now that Kanak would speak out against Fel, saying whatever he wanted to slander the human, it was best if the Fel family didn't return to Csilla for a while after all.

As the shuttle travelled through hyperspace after some time, Soontir had just finished explaining to his wife and daughter of their circumstances in the ship passenger cabin.

"Well, it's good that you saved us from wrongful imprisonment, Soontir," Syal told her husband. "But where are we going?"

"To Denon," Soontir answered. "We need to get help from the Jedi Order." As he said that, he realized that he regretted not taking Jacen Solo's offer of Jedi aid in his investigation into the Ruling Council's affairs.

"You think the Alliance of the Galaxy will be able to accept us, Dad?" Wynssa, or "Wyn," asked. Given that her father just told her and her mother that this conspiracy extended to the AG, it was possible that the government itself might not even permit the shuttle to land on Denon, what with it being a foreign ship not cleared from either the Chiss Ascendancy or the Alliance of the Galaxy.

Soontir shook his head. "I doubt it. But if I can just contact the Order, we might be able to get somewhere to foiling this conspiracy. One way or another, I promise the both of you that when this is over, we will return home, and without disgrace for abandoning the Ascendancy; not when I can prove that there is real disgrace to be placed on Kanak and everyone else who's associated with Begranda the Hutt."

.

Using some of the more advanced electronic-clearing Force-techniques that she delved into learning from her acceptance of the Unifying Force, Nelani had broke through the looping programming that the Jedi Temple's computers had been corrupted by and found what the vidcams would have been showing to the Temple's security personnel had it not been for the looping.

"So that's the culprit," Nelani said as she pointed at the image of the red-skinned Twi'lek placing the nuclear bomb that had been found and teleported to the edge of Denon's space. "Freeze the image, enlarge it, and see if we can ID her."

One of the Temple's two security members, male Chevin Sothais Saar, complied with Nelani's command while the other member, dark-skinned female human Turi Altamik, began to go through her personal computer to access AG records, a privilege granted to the Jedi Order by the Alliance of the Galaxy itself for the sake of the investigation.

After a few moments of wading through the list of red-skinned Twi'lek women living on Denon or anywhere else in the AG's jurisdiction, Turi finally found a match.

"Her name is Jeeshaw Regnon; a private enlisted in the AG military."

Behind Nelani, the Jedi Master accompanying her on this investigation, Saba Sebatyne, hissed as if in amusement, as most Barabels tended to do. "So there iz poison in the ranks of the Allianze of the Galaxy; it iz time to purge it."

Two hours later, Jeeshaw Ragnon, arrested by Saba and Nelani under permission of a warrant granted by Chief of State Omas himself, was stuncuffed and seated in the Temple's underground interrogation chamber, with Nelani sitting across from the Twi'lek. As she did before back in the Temple's security room, Saba stood a few feet behind Nelani, as much to intimidate Ragnon into talking as she was there to monitor how Nelani handled this situation.

"As a Jedi, it is my obligation to offer you at least one chance to come clean about who your accomplices are in both the destruction of the AG Building and in the attempt of this very Temple, Miss Ragnon," Nelani said. "So please let this be easy and let me-"

"You can torture me all you want, Jedi!" Ragnon practically spat. "I will die before telling you!"

The Twi'lek then broke her molar to try to bite down on one of two her cyanide capsules, only to freeze up when she didn't feel the poison killing her.

Nelani grinned, and then lifted up her palm to reveal both capsules lying there. "I figured you might have something like this should you ever be caught and interrogated for what you've done, Miss Ragnon, so I sensed them out through the Force and teleported them out of your molars, just like I did with the bomb you tried to use in this Temple." She then closed her fist back up as Saba approached from behind to offer her own scaly hand, which Nelani dropped the capsules into, before the Barabel shuffled back to her previous position.

"Now that we have that out of the way," Nelani said, "would you like to rethink your position on telling me who your accomplices are, Miss Ragnon?" Her expression and tone then turned deadly serious. "Or will I have to violently probe your mind in a way that will make the death provided by one of those capsules feel like a nice massage in comparison?"

Nelani sensed the Twi'lek try to move to bang her head against the hard table, only to be thrown back against her seat by a small Force-wave from Nelani.

"I have all day, you know," Nelani said casually. "Last chance before I commence a mind-probe."

Ragnon sneered. "That only works on the weak-minded."

"Simple mind-tricks, sure," Nelani said. "But a mind-probe is something a little bit more extensive; it can even break the wills of species like Hutts if applied correctly."

Ragnon's eyes widened in genuine fear at hearing this.

"Well?" Nelani asked.

Ragnon eventually growled. "Do your worst."

"I'll try not to," Nelani replied sardonically before she closed her eyes and concentrated.

Two minutes later, Nelani stood up from her seat, turning from the now-reeling Ragnon who had just revealed every single one of her accomplices in the AG.

"Good work, Jedi Dinn," Saba said. "You managed to extract the information from Ragnon's head without doing any permanent damage."

"Thank you, Master Sebatyne," Nelani replied stoically, though she felt pride from the Barabel's commendation. "Now we must let Chief Omas and Master Horn know about this right away." She then reached into her pocket to first contact Acting Grand Master Horn.


	21. Chapter 21

For the first time since Jaina had been here, several of the dancers in Dev'lia's Dirties had decided to end their own lives, as they would have rather died than continue to live in the degradation that Dev'lia was putting all of them through. They did it by asking their fellow dancers to do things like strangle them with pieces of dispensable clothing that they had to wear, for instance. Jaina herself was asked by the blue-skinned Twi'lek dancer named Leanna to strangle her to death with the bra that she would often pop off with her movements, and the entrapped Jedi had complied out of empathy.

Once all of the dancers who asked for death had received their final wish, there were now only eight left, including Jaina. Her other fellow survivors included two Chagrian women, a Togruta, a Gungun, two humans, and two Twi'leks.

When Dev'lia found out about this when he walked into the dancers' lounge to find out what happened hours after the deaths occurred, the surviving dancers were all standing up in the scanty clothes that they had on and stared stoically ahead at the red-furred Bothan. In response, a flicker of rage dashed across Dev'lia's face as he looked between the survivors and the corpses around them before just as quickly resolving into the same calm that the dancers were meeting him with.

As expected, Jaina could do nothing, as he had that same damn dead-man's switch in hand; why could he never just forget about it?

Then he simply grinned before turning and leaving the lounge. And from there, Jaina and her fellow survivors could hear him call out through the entirety of the cantina, "I'm very sorry, ladies and gentlemen, but I'm afraid that something has just come up that warrants an early close for tonight."

Following the expected disappointed groan from the patrons, Dev'lia continued with, "However, I can assure you, we will make it up to all of you tomorrow with extended hours, which I will post later tonight as soon as we have this situation under control. So until then, I am going to have to ask all of you to leave and return to your domiciles in a calm and orderly fashion. Come on, let's go, trust me, I will have this all resolved and I'll make it up to you tomorrow."

It was a long time until absolute silence fell throughout Dev'lia Dirties. And mere minutes ticked by as Jaina and the other dancers stood by, still and silent, before Dev'lia returned.

But he didn't return alone, as he had six others with him; a Weequay, a Gran (who was carrying a briefcase of some kind), two Bith, a human, and a Wookiee. The human and the Wookiee were both armed and pointing their military-grade blasters in the general direction of the surviving women.

"Goik, Hoik, you may have your food now," Dev'lia said, waving at the corpses around them.

Silently, but with looks of salivation on their expressions, the two Bith dove in among the corpses, beginning to gnaw on the dying flesh around them. All the dancers, including Jaina, had to back away in disgust.

"I hope you guys got doggie bags with you," Dev'lia said with a grin, "'cause I imagine those bodies'll last ya a week; if you keep 'em preserved, of course."

Both Bith looked up from their meals and back at Dev'lia.

"This will last us a week," Goik said.

"And we will keep them preserved," Hoik concluded.

And then they wordlessly went back to their meals.

"As for you, ladies," Dev'lia said, returning his attention to the surviving dancers, "you just cost me quite a bit of revenue. Thankfully, His Majesty Begranda already has a few women in reserve for me for just this kind of incident; but just because this wasn't a major hit, don't think I'm not going to have all of you punished for this.

"You two Chagrian, and you two Twi'leks, you'll be sharing Amunda's cell." He indicated one of the Chagrian with a nod of his head. "And you'll be accompanied by Polluk and Dredon over here."

"Oh, c'mon, Devvy, why do you have to lump me in with Polluk?" the Gran asked.

"Consider it a bonding process between the two of you," Dev'lia said in bemusement.

Dredon didn't even bother suppressing the irritated groan that escaped his lips, but he waved the Weequay after him. "Alright, c'mon, Polluk, let's go."

Wordlessly, the two Chagrian and two Twi'leks turned and followed Amunda into her cell, with Polluk and Dredon following suit; however, during the brief trip, Polluk nearly tripped on his untied shoelaces, prompting Dredon to shake his fists in anger before having to bend over and tie them up for the Weequay. They then resumed the trip to Amunda's cell.

He then pointed to the Togruta, the Gungun, and two of the humans, neither of whom were Jaina.

"All of you will be accompanied by Boranc and Jerlacca here into Mawasa's cell," he said, indicating the Gungun.

Neither Boranc nor Jerlacca had the same trouble as Polluk and Dredon did in escorting their charges to the Gungun's cell.

Once everyone else was gone, that just left Dev'lia to grin sensually at Jaina before slowly approaching her. For her part, Jaina stood her ground as before, even as she heard the agonized screams of her fellow dancers in the cells that they were escorted to.

When Dev'lia finally reached Jaina, he didn't say a word as his grin quickly changed to an expression of pure hatred. With the fist that wasn't clenched on the dead-man's switch, he punched Jaina against in exposed stomach, doubling her over before the Bothan grabbed a handful of her hair and roughly turned her around to begin dragging her back to her cell.

He soon punched the button that opened up Jaina's cell with the hand still clenched on Jaina's hair before shoving her inside. She collapsed against on the floor, just short of the cot, but before she could even try to get up, Dev'lia had rushed in and shoved Jaina right back against the cold, hard floor.

Then he began to rip off what few clothes she had on, leaving bloodied scratch marks on Jaina's skin. She seethed in pain, internally vowing to herself that she would not cry or scream as her fellow dancers did. She braced herself, ready to get raped in her hindquarters when she heard the zipper of Dev'lia's pants go down.

He was about to shove himself in when everything stopped; an alarm now rang out through Dev'lia's Dirties.

Dev'lia shoved Jaina's head back against the floor before he stood up, zipped his pants back up, and turned to leave the cell behind; he did make sure to close and lock it behind him, just as Dredon did from Amunda's cell when he and Polluk left, and as Boranc did when he and Jerlacca left. Goik and Hoik had also stopped feasting on their corpses and stood up to meet with their fellow sex criminals.

"What's going on?" Polluk asked when they were all back in the lounge.

"Attention, mining occupants," the sound of a masculine computerized voice sounded. "This is not a drill. Repeat, this is not a drill. The mining base is now under attack; report to your stations. If you are a civilian, find your underground shelter that will keep you from bombardment; if you are a soldier, head over to your assigned station immediately."

"C'mon, boys," Dev'lia said as he bent down and opened a hidden trapdoor in the middle of the lounge. "Just as I prepared." He then began waving his friends down inside, one by one, until the Bothan was the last one.

But before he climbed in, he turned back to look at the cells in which he and the others had left the surviving dancers; he sneered in derision, cursing the fact that he couldn't do anymore to Jaina Solo (at least not right now, anyway) before joining his friends to safety.


	22. Chapter 22

As Ducha Lorangal's fleet of Battle Dragons and Miy'til fighters began engaging the enemy starfighters and motley array of capital vessels around the nameless world owned by Begranda Degrona Jaluub, soldiers down within the artificial domes of the planet took to their stations. Troops of various species were now entering transparisteel pods that rose from the depths of the planet to breach the roofs of the domes; once there, those troops angled the rapid-fire laser turrets upward into the brown sky to shoot down any incoming enemy ships. Several minutes into the battle, Miy'til fighters broke through the thin atmosphere and began firing missiles and other deadly projectiles down toward the domes, which the surface soldiers began blasting out of the sky while also targeting for the Miy'tils.

As the battle commenced, Commander Yerlof stood next to her Ducha on her Battle Dragon's bridge as they leaned over to the officer scanning for life-forms within the underground confines of the planet ahead.

Yerlof beamed with pride as she looked at the results from the computer before her. "These fools' standard sensor-disruption devices stand no match for the complexities of our own sensors, Milady."

"Of course they do not, Commander," Lorangal replied casually, as if she knew what Yerlof said to be a simple fact. She then turned her attention to the officer running the life-form scan. "What do we have here, officer?"

"I am reading about one hundred and thirty Bothans within the confines of the planet, Milady," the officer replied, not turning her gaze from the computer. "All of them fairly even spaced out throughout the world."

Lorangal scowled in thought for a moment. "Specify the scan to look for female life-forms."

Not stopping to ask her Ducha as to why she should do that, since Dev'lia himself would not be found within that scan, the officer complied. Yerlof, for her part, remained impassive on the surface, though she did wonder why her Ducha would order this.

Then it came to Yerlof's mind: where women, who would be used for the pleasure of Dev'lia and the rest of his sick associates, might be.

After a few moments, the officer came back with, "There are more women, but they are more evenly spaced out than Bothans."

"I guess not all women are being used as dancers there," Lorangal said sardonically.

"What do you wish to do now, Milady?" Yerlof asked.

"What I planned to do from the beginning," Lorangal said with determination. "I'm going to be escorted down to that world via shuttlecraft, and if I have to, I will investigate each and every one of those surface domes to find Dev'lia and kill him."

Yerlof and everyone else on the bridge stopped what they were doing and turned to look at their Ducha in shock.

"But, Milady," Yerlof argued, "you cannot do that right now! Not with this battle-"

"My life has been in jeopardy since we set out on this quest, Commander Yerlof," Lorangal interrupted. "And my life is in jeopardy even aboard the bridge of this Battle Dragon." She looked back to the viewport. "One way or another, I will find Dev'lia and avenge Drekana."

Yerlof swallowed nervously. "As you wish, Milady."

"Indeed," Lorangal said before swiftly turning around and walking out of the bridge, her retinue of guards falling into step behind her as she headed for the Battle Dragon's hangar bay.

.

About half an hour into the battle, the _Service Sender_ finally dropped out of hyperspace, several million miles away from the conflict itself.

On the bridge of the Dreadnaught, which had yet to attract any attention thanks to the battle ahead, Jacen, Tenel Ka, Jag, and Captain Udono all stood facing the forward viewport, the Rodian looking nervous, as always, standing next to the three of them.

"Is Jaina there?" Jag asked Jacen and Tenel Ka in concern. "Is she still alive?"

"She is," Jacen replied. "Whatever stopped me from sensing her in the first place is gone now."

Jag looked relieved.

"But Lorangal is still alive," Tenel Ka said. "But she's not among the Battle Dragons; I can sense her within the planet's atmosphere."

"She must be going after Dev'lia," Jacen surmised.

Tenel Ka grinned. "Then we'll be able to get 'em all in one fell swoop."

"Well, what are we waiting for, let's go!" Jag said.

"Wait," Jacen said, stopping his brother-in-law and Tenel Ka from leaving. He then turned to Udono. "Just so you know, Captain, I managed to create a Dathomiri bloodmark somewhere aboard this ship; should you go anywhere without myself or any of my accomplices, know this: I _will_ find you. Understand?"

Udono wordlessly nodded.

Jacen then turned back to Tenel Ka and Jag. "Now we can go."

Then the three humans all turned and rushed out of the bridge, leaving a now-relieved Udono in command of his own ship again; that was, until he looked back to the viewport to find groups of motley starfighters and Hapan Miy'tils headed his way.

"Kriff my life," the Rodian said aloud as his ship fell into red alert.

.

Thanks to the skills of the Hapan shuttle's pilot, Lorangal, seated in the ship's passenger seat to see where they would be going, didn't feel as worried as she felt that she should have been as the armed craft's weapons blazed away against both enemy starfighters and ground turrets alike.

At the sight of a dome whose turret had been destroyed, Lorangal pointed toward it. "Go there," she ordered the pilot. "Hopefully, we can find something in there."

Wordlessly, the pilot complied and maneuvered the ship down through the smoking crater and into the landing bay of the dome, which was filled with unarmed vessels and vehicles that would serve no threat against the Hapan shuttle; not unless they could be used to outright ram against the shuttle.

However, men and women of various species - Lorangal despised the thought that other women could view members of their own gender as sex objects - who were in the hangar bay taken out weapons of various make and began firing at the ray-shielded shuttle.

The pilot simply activated the ship's auto-turret, assigned the programmed weapon its targets, and allowed it to eliminate all enemies in the hangar bar with ease.

When that was done, the pilot then pressed the button on the console before her that opened up the shuttle's landing ramp. From there, Lorangal unstrapped herself from her seat and walked out of the cockpit to join her retinue of soldiers, standing up from their seats in the passenger cabin, who all followed down the ramp.

After walking past a row of miners' bodies, Lorangal approached a map section of one of the hangar bay's walls that showed which dome this was, what locations were contained in this dome, what its relationship was with the planet's other domes, and what those domes contained.

When she was done looking through this information, Lorangal finally found out which dome had Dev'lia Dirties, turned around, and returned to the shuttle to instruct the pilot where they had to go to.

.

"I can't believe Udono managed to keep the _Harla_," Jag commented once he, Jacen, and Tenel Ka were all aboard the _Faux Harla_ in the _Service Sender_'s hangar bay.

"Well, it is a good ship," Jacen commented as the three of them headed to the cockpit.

"Damn right," Jag said with pride, as if it were his own vessel instead of his wife's. "I'll be piloting, by the way."

Jacen turned to look at his brother-in-law. "Allow me; my Force-senses can help us navigate through the battle."

"What, and my natural skills aren't up to snuff?" Jag argued.

"Boys, boys, before we continue," Tenel Ka said, "I vote Jacen to pilot; I trust him more because of his Force-senses. So you lose, Jag."

Jag looked at Tenel Ka with a sneer. He looked like he was about to say something in response, but bit it back, given that this was no time to argue anyway.

"Now that we have that settled," Jacen said before turning back to the cockpit. "You can be my co-pilot, Jag."

"Of course," Jag muttered in disappointment.

Once Jacen and Jag were in their chosen seats, and Tenel Ka was in the navigator's chair, the _Faux Harla_ was soon fired up before Jacen lifted her off the _Sender_'s hangar deck, and rocketed out of the Dreadnaught.

It wasn't long as the _Harla_ crossed through the empty field of space before she ended up in the thronging battlefield between Lorangal's rogue fleet and Begranda Degrona Jaluub's varied fleet. Immediately, as Jacen began throwing his sister's ship into a series of loops and maneuvers while activating the _Harla_'s automated turret, he practically shouted, "You two, get to the manual turrets and blast some of these ships out of our way!"

"I call top!" Tenel Ka proclaimed as she pushed herself out of her seat and headed to the back.

"I wanted the top," Jag muttered before he stood and followed Tenel Ka to the back, where she took the top turret and he took the bottom.

With that, the _Harla_'s automated turret was aided by Jag and Tenel Ka's own shots, blasting Miy'til's and Begranda-owned fighters alike out of the sky as the sole ship belonging to neither side continued to head to the planet ahead.

.

The pilot next to Lorangal managed to blow out the pod protecting the dome containing Dev'lia's Dirties with a few well-placed laser shots. Then, when the entrance into that dome was nothing but a smoking crater, the shuttle settled down through the wreckage and onto the hangar bay, where, as before, miners with blasters waited to kill anyone who came out of the armed ship.

And as before, the pilot activated her ship's automated turret, killing all miners in the vicinity. Moments later, the shuttle's landing ramp was down, and Lorangal, surrounded by her guards, pretty much led the way out before approaching the mapping section of one of the hangar's walls.

After seeing where Dev'lia's Dirties was in the dome, she then turned to the hangar bay's exit and led the way on-foot to the cantina. Minutes after entering the city, Lorangal and her guards spotted an incoming hovertaxi, which one of the guards shot a blaster bolt toward, quickly melting through the forward viewport and murdering the driving Codru-Ji there. The taxi then turned and careened against a dumpster, stopping it in its figurative tracks.

"You four will come with me," Lorangal said, pointing to four of her guards. "The rest of you, find a vehicle, steal it, and meet up with the rest of us at the bar; you all know where that is, right?"

All the guards, including the ones who would join Lorangal in the cab, nodded.

"Good," Lorangal concluded before she and the four guards with her split up from the rest of the group and headed to the taxi.

Moments later, the dead Codru-Ji had been thrown out into the street, and then Lorangal and the guards all took their seats inside; one of the guards took the driver's spot, another in the passenger seat, and Lorangal was seated in the center seat of the taxi between two of her guards.

Once the taxi was back up and running toward Dev'lia's Dirties, Lorangal sat back in anticipation as she got ever closer to Dev'lia's Dirties.

.

Now past the planet's atmosphere, the _Faux Harla_ spiralled ever closer toward the dome where Jacen not only sensed Lorangal to be in, but also Jaina as well; and he kept on course even as he continued to dodge and maneuver between the fire of Hapan and Begranda-owned ships alike.

Two minutes later, the _Harla_ had managed to get out of the battle above and almost calmly settled down through the smoking aperture of the dome. But then the YT buckled from laser shots fired from below, and Jacen saw on his sister's ship's sensors that a Hapan shuttle - most likely the one that brought Lorangal here - was the one firing at the _Harla_.

Thankfully, the YT's automated turret and the ones fired by Jag and Tenel Ka were already harrying the Hapan shuttle, and Jacen took Jaina's vessel through another series of maneuvers in the relatively confined space of the dome's hangar to get it out of the shuttle's line of fire.

It wasn't long before the _Harla_'s lasers overwhelmed the skills of the opposing shuttle pilot's abilities and brought it down in a fiery explosion. When that was done, Jacen settled his sister's ship down upon the hangar, cycled the ship's engines off, and followed Jag and Tenel Ka down the YT's now-open landing ramp.

Once they were out in the city-like environment of the dome, Jag noticed that, nearby, there was a stand of hoverbikes parked. He drew Jacen and Tenel Ka's attention to the vehicles by pointing at the bikes.

"We can make it to the cantina quicker with those," Jag said. "I can hotwire them-"

"No need," Jacen said as he reached out a hand toward the hoverbikes.

Instantly, two of the hoverbikes roared to life.

Jag looked mildly disappointed as he looked back at his brother-in-law. "Is there nothing you can't do with the Force?"

"I doubt I'd try to walk across the surface of a black hole," Jacen quipped. "C'mon, Jag, you take the second one. Tenel Ka will ride with me."

.

The hovertaxi containing Lorangal and her four chosen guards encountered no resistance between the time they obtained the vehicle to when they finally made it to Dev'lia's Dirties. When all five of them exited the vehicle, the guards stopped to join their Ducha in looking at the sign, which depicted a giant Twi'lek lit by neon lights in scanty clothing, which was gradually removed until the Twi'lek was completely naked.

Lorangal growled in anger before returning her attention to the entrance of the bar ahead. Without anymore hesitation, she headed toward it, her guards following and surrounding her as always.

Once they were inside, they began investigating the entire cantina by violently turning over the tables, chairs, and even throwing bottles of alcohol off the shelves; anyone with half a brain could see that they were taking out their frustrations with how Dev'lia treated women as much as they were looking for the Bothan and anyone associated with his criminal activities.

Lorangal and her four guards were about to enter a backroom when they heard the door from which they entered the bar open up again. They all turned to find a fit, athletic male Zabrak pointing two hand blasters in their general direction.

The two guards closest to Lorangal quickly grabbed their Ducha by her arms and pulled her to the bar's floor before just as hurriedly overturning one of the few tables yet to be disturbed from its perch so that it could be used as an impromptu shield.

As for the other two guards, the one to the Zabrak's wasn't able to react fast enough when a red laser bolt scorched her face and dropped her dead body to the floor. The other guard, however, was able to duck out of the way in time from the bolt fired by the Zabrak's other blaster so she could hide behind the counter.

The Zabrak then dove toward an upturned table to use that as a shield, just as the guards protecting Lorangal were now doing, and allowed the three remaining guards to fire upon his shield, gradually splintering it into pieces.

As soon as the shield was depleted enough to be rendered practically useless, the Zabrak rolled off to his left, firing wildly as he went in the directions of the guards, before he ended up behind another upturned table.

And in between the Zabrak's brief travel between his first upturned table to the next, the guard to Lorangal's left had taken a bolt to the face, ending her life.

"Come on, Milady," the remaining guard next to the Ducha whispered, "we need to get you to better safety."

Meanwhile, the guard hiding behind the counter leaped up from her spot and fired at the Zabrak, missing wildly as the alien leaped to hide behind yet another upturned table. His next shots for the two remaining guards, however, missed, as the guard behind the counter had already ducked back behind her perch while the other one was rushing Lorangal to the backroom they were originally heading to.

Now in the next room, Lorangal and her remaining guard had the door closed for the other guard and the Zabrak to continue their firefight. The Ducha and her servant then looked about to find themselves in some kind of lounge, and almost immediately, they heard the sounds of women's voices from doors at the far end of the lounge.

The two Hapans then hurried over to one of the cells, and out poured four wounded and naked women, two of whom were Twi'leks and the other two being Chagrian.

"Bring them over to that sofa," Lorangal instructed her guard.

Wordlessly, the guard guided the four women over to the indicated sofa while Lorangal herself moved on to the next cell. From that came two human women, a Togruta, and a Gungun, who the guard, having taken care of the Twi'leks and Chagrian, also guided over to another of the lounge's sofas.

Finally, Lorangal opened the last cell from which a female voice could be heard, and it was only one naked and bloodied chestnut-haired woman who walked out, looking as traumatized and scared as the other women did.

Lorangal decided that she would lead this woman over to the others herself.

As the Ducha led the nude dancer over to one of the sofas, the human pointed to the floor. "There," she rasped. "I can sense him and his friends."

Lorangal looked to the indicated spot before turning her attention back to her charge. "Dev'lia?" the Ducha asked.

The other woman nodded. "And his friends."

"How do you know this?" Lorangal inquired.

"I can feel their Force-presences," the woman responded.

"Force-presences?" Then Lorangal's eyes widened in horror and then narrowed in hatred. She then shoved the naked woman to the floor, stomped over to the guard, grabbed the assault rifle out of her hands, and then aimed it down at the now-confused naked woman on the floor.

"You're a Jedi," Lorangal growled.

"Milady, this woman needs help!" the guard implored. "Even with our hatred of the Jedi, it should not matter if she is-"

The guard was cut off from saying anymore when Lorangal aimed the gun and shot the guard right in the face, ending her life, much to the shock of the already-traumatized dancers, before the Ducha pointed the weapon back at the woman on the floor.

.

Lasaunge managed to traverse the length of the bar, narrowly avoiding getting hit by the laser bolts being fired by the Hapan guards hiding behind the bar counter as he hid behind more upturned tables. Soon, he managed to leap up and over the counter before the guard could fire a shot, kicking her in the face before tackling her to the floor.

And with a simple point-blank shot in the face, the Hapan guard was gone.

But before Lasaunge could think about standing back up to kill Ducha Lorangal and her remaining guard, he heard the bar door open again, and he peered over the counter to find even more Hapan soldiers enter. He ducked back behind the counter, hoping he wouldn't be seen, only for lasers to be fired just over his head.

The Zabrak groaned; he hoped his blasters still had enough charges in them to take out these new troops... assuming he could even survive them.

But the tide for Lasaunge shifted again when he heard the bar door open again, and with it came the sounds of two distinctive _snap-hiss_es issue accompanying the blaster shots.

Lasaunge knew that _snap-hiss_!sound; it came from a Jedi lightsaber.

Things just seemed to get worse and worse, the Zabrak thought; he thought this would be easier when Begranda sent him down here to try to protect the Hutt's investment in Dev'lia's Dirties. Lasaunge would be lucky enough to report back to Begranda to be executed for his failure to protect the cantina.

Nevertheless, the Zabrak persisted, and he quickly ducked back up from behind the counter and began firing his blasters toward the distracted Hapan soldiers, who were already being downed by deflected shots from the lightsabers of the two Jedi present, along with the shots of another light-skinned human male with a scar across his face. It wasn't long before Lasaunge ran out of ammo in his blasters and threw them away.

By the time the last Hapan soldier was dead a few seconds later, Lasaunge didn't hesitate; he took out the two smoke pallets that Begranda assured him would be useful in case he had to fight Jedi and he threw them over to the trio of new arrivals. The Zabrak then mounted the counter and rushed into the smoke, able to distinguish the two green-bladed lightsabers in the overwhelming whiteness.

As expected, both blades swung to try to strike Lasaunge down; but since the Zabrak knew who he was dealing with, he already ducked beneath the lightsabers and tackled the unseen Jedi to his left.

The two of them then collapsed against an upturned table, with Lasaunge not releasing his hold on the male Jedi he tackled, and the human's lightsaber clattered away across the bar. Lasaunge then punched his chosen Jedi across the jaw several times, making sure that he was stunned before taking out a vibroknife from his own pocket, prepared to slit the human's throat.

But then the Jedi blew him back with the Force so that the Zabrak hit a wall behind him and collapsed to his hindquarters in pain. Then, after the male Jedi stood up, by which point the smoke around the female Jedi and the other human male had all but cleared out, the male Jedi turned to his two compatriots and told them, "Jaina is in the other room." The male Jedi pointed to where Lorangal and one of her guards went through. "And Dev'lia is there, but... under, somehow."

The female Jedi and the man next to her nodded at their compatriot, then they turned and headed to the backroom.

When those two were gone, the male Jedi looked back down at Lasaunge and grinned.

"Nice try, pal," the human said, "but unless you have Force-powers, you don't stand a chance."

Mentally struggling to come up with a plan that could beat the Jedi, Lasaunge stopped and remembered that he had one other thing on his person that could turn the odds to his favor, something that he forgot about in the midst of all the shooting that had gone on.

Hurriedly, he took out the vial containing ysalamiri fluid - something created by Dev'lia's Gran friend Dredon - and threw it toward the Jedi, where it shattered at the human's feet, creating a multi-colored mist that engulfed him. The Jedi rapidly backpedaled from the mist, coughing profusely, and Lasaunge then took the time to shove himself back to his feet and charge at his human opponent.

With the Force all but absent from the Jedi, as the effect would only last for a few minutes, Lasaunge knew that he needed much less than that to finish him off.

.

When Jaina finally recognized that the woman now pointing the assault rifle down upon her was the vigilante Ducha Lorangal, the naked Jedi held out a palm and blew the Hapan back across the room before she could pull the trigger, knocking her unconscious.

"Now that you're out of the way for the moment," Jaina said in a tone more characteristic of her usual self.

She was just standing up when Tenel Ka and Jag barged through the door.

"Jag!" Jaina called her husband's name before immediately rushing into his arms.

"Jaina, I missed you so much," Jag nearly cried.

"I missed you, too, honey," Jaina almost sobbed.

While the Fels were busy reuniting, Tenel Ka, sensing a group of presences beneath the room, searched through the Force to somehow reach those presences, as she figured that the people she was sensing must be Dev'lia and his associates.

It wasn't long before she found and located the trapdoor and used the Force to raise it up before she rushed over and jumped down inside. When Tenel Ka reached the bottom with a Force-cushioned blow, she stood up and found herself in a dark shaft that, ahead, led toward a lonely light source shining over a metal door.

And behind that door, she felt the presences of those disgusting beings that had rendered Jaina and all those other women above naked and wounded.

Tenel Ka then hurried across the shaft to reach the door, lightsaber still in hand and lit, only to stop short when, from above the light, an automated gun turret had lowered and aimed its barrel at Tenel Ka. The woman then began deflecting the green bolts that were fired at her, redirecting them back at the turret until it was nothing but a smoking ruin.

But it was enough of a distraction to stop Tenel Ka before the door was suddenly rising above the light; and the Hapan Jedi could feel that the presences in the room that was behind that door were also ascending.

"Oh, no, you don't," Tenel Ka muttered.

She then resumed her pace for the rising door and made it to Force-leap upward, plunging her green blade through the thick metal. She then carved out a wide circle before Force-shoving herself inside to roll across the floor of the spacious and comfortable safe-room before leaping back up to her feet, her lightsaber held diagonally across her torso.

The six rapists - a red-furred Bothan, a Weequay, a Gran, two Bith, a human, and a Wookiee - all stood back at the far corner of the safe-room. The human and Wookiee, being the only ones armed, levelled their assault rifles up at Tenel Ka, but before they could fire off a shot, she reached out with her lightsaber-wielding hand - which was her only hand, anyway - and extended two fingers out.

The Force then came through and crushed the barrels of the rifles, rendering them all but deadly for the human and Wookiee should they actually use their weapons, as they might blow up and kill them.

Tenel Ka then looked around and found a strange lever-like device nearby, which she determined was the cause for why the safe-room was rising, and slashed out at it.

"No, wait!" the red-furred Bothan - Dev'lia, Tenel Ka knew - cried out.

As if to accompany Dev'lia's words, Tenel Ka's danger sense spiked, but it was too late; her lightsaber had slashed through the device, and immediately, the entire room tipped toward the side that the rapists were on. Tenel Ka, for her part, deactivated her lightsaber and allowed herself to tumble toward the other side of the room, where she landed along the wall above Dev'lia.

Moments later, the entire safe-room shook with a loud _crash!_ that thundered through Tenel Ka's bones, followed quickly by another _crash!_, which immediately knocked her and the rapists unconscious. But after several seconds, the shaking stopped, and the light above the safe-room went out.

.

Jacen was doing his best to counter the Zabrak's vicious attacks, but without the Force, or his lightsaber for that matter, his opponent was landing strikes on him that, normally, would not have landed on the Grand Master of the Jedi Order. Jacen was accumulating bruises and scrapes from the Zabrak's hits, kicks, and the cuts from his vibroknife, and Jacen barely kept up from being slashed in any vital areas that would spell certain doom for him.

However, before the fight could go on any longer, the roof above the two combatants caved in, and they broke up their duel to leap out of the way, going in separate directions as a rectangular-like ship crashed inside.

When the dust cleared out from the thing's sudden entry, Jacen stood up, only to find the Zabrak already on top of the thing. The Force-less Grand Master brought up his fists, ready for another round, when his alien opponent had bent down on top of the thing and was opening it up via some kind of lever. When the Zabrak finally got the door open, he jumped inside.

Deciding to take the time to at least find his lightsaber, Jacen looked around and eventually found his weapon behind an upturned table. He picked it up and turned back to face the giant thing that had crashed through the roof, only to find the green blade of a lightsaber carving a large swath from inside.

When the swath had been cut, Tenel Ka and the Zabrak fell out, the alien wrestling the Hapan Jedi by her sole, lightsaber-wielding arm so she wouldn't have the room to strike him down.

At the same time, Jaina, Jag, and several naked women of different species came from the backroom from which Jag and Tenel Ka went through and watched the newfound commotion going on as Jacen was now doing. Thankfully, Jacen decided to rush in so he could strike the Zabrak down without harming Tenel Ka.

But right then, as if in slow motion, three other things happened; Ducha Lorangal came out from the backroom with her assault rifle aimed at Jaina from behind, and from the entrance of the bar, a group of human and alien men - all belonging to Begranda - came in with different blasters and assault rifles.

And Jacen felt the Force returning to him.

As Jaina turned to face Lorangal and jumped out of the way, the Ducha's shot firing to strike one of Begranda's men in the head, and absolute chaos erupted in the bar right then.

Everyone began jumping out of the way of fired shots while delivering some of their own, some ending up getting killed in the crossfire, some living just a few rounds longer than others.

Jacen, for his part, began deflecting blaster shots back at the human and alien men working for Begranda. Tenel Ka, meanwhile, managed to break out of the Zabrak's grip, but before she could strike him down, the alien had already rolled back and out of the way of the blade's reach before he turned and leaped for an upturned table to hide behind. Tenel Ka, forgetting about the Zabrak who was armed only with a vibroknife, stood up and rushed to join Jacen's side to deflect the lasers back at the men working for Begranda, who now spread out through the bar and tried to shoot the two Jedi down with more tactical sense.

Jaina, meanwhile, leaped into the fray of Begranda's men, tackled a human who was roughly her size to the floor and killed him by smacking him in the throat. As he gagged and died from the strike, she began removing his clothes, while the men around her were too busy concentrating their efforts onto trying to shoot down Jacen and Tenel Ka. However, she soon found herself having to move about the bar while simultaneously putting her clothes on, relying on her danger senses from being killed.

Lasaunge the Zabrak, meanwhile, was now rushing toward Jag, and eventually slashed the blaster out of the human's hands. But a second later, Jag managed to punch the weapon out of the alien's hands, and the two began a fistfight, with Jag punching and kicking at the Zabrak viciously for the fact that he sold him and Jaina into sex slavery.

Now, from the crashed safe-room, Dev'lia, Polluk, Dredon, Goik, Hoik, Boranc, and Jerlacca all spilled out from the second hole created by Tenel Ka's lightsaber and looked out at their surroundings.

"Hey, those are Jedi!" Polluk shouted to his friends as he pointed at Jacen and Tenel Ka's backs. "Let's get 'em while they're distracted!" And without any weapons, the stupid Weequay charged for the two Jedi.

Only to be sliced across his midsection by Tenel Ka's lightsaber and decapitated by Jacen's in less than a second. Polluk then collapsed in three pieces across the floor, dead.

In the midst of all the anarchy in the room, Dredon couldn't help but smirk in amusement. "A fitting end for that moron," he muttered.

And just as quickly, a shot that went wide from one of Begranda's men ended up hitting Dredon right in his central eye. The three-eyed alien then spun around from the blast, and he fell back dead.

"C'mon, we have to get outta here!" Dev'lia called to his remaining friends.

But while Boranc and Jerlacca heeded their boss's words, Goik and Hoik ignored their friend and dove in among the bodies around them as they began to gorge themselves on the corpses. The Bothan, human, and Wookiee, on the other hand, held to a far wall along the bar to go around the conflict.

At the far side of the bar, Lorangal, having had the assault rifle shot out of her hands by one of Begranda's men, ducked to the floor to avoid the bolts as best as she could, and looked up to find her quarry, Dev'lia, inching across the far wall to avoid the bolts.

Deciding to ignore the lasers being fired about, Lorangal stood up and braved across the bar to rush over to Dev'lia, rushing past the Bith on the floor who only then got scored by wild blasterfire from Begranda's men.

However, the Wookiee got in her way, but she managed to duck beneath the giant alien's fist, spun around his furry frame, and kicked him in the small of his back, sending him into the crossfire of Begranda's men. Jerlacca the Wookiee was studded by lethal laser bolts before collapsing dead to the floor, followed closely by Boranc, who Lorangal punched in the gut and shoved into the line of fire.

But Dev'lia was ready for Lorangal. He smacked the Hapan in the face, sending her reeling back, but she recovered from the strike to tackle Dev'lia out of anger. The two of them then spun around, grasping and punching each other, as they went behind Begranda's remaining men before spilling out through the exit of the cantina.

They landed, still holding onto each other as they rolled across the ground, ending up with Lorangal on top of Dev'lia. She then punched him several times across his snouted face before he eventually grabbed her fist and punched her up the jaw, stunning her long enough for him to throw her off of him.

The Bothan and the Hapan then stood up and faced each other down.

"You killed my friend," Lorangal growled.

"That so?" Dev'lia retorted. "Well, in that case, maybe I should have you two reunited." He then bared the claws on his face fingers.

The two of them then rushed in for each other, with Lorangal meeting Dev'lia with a spin-kick across his head. He stumbled back from the strike before ending up with another kick to his sternum, but when Lorangal's fist rocketed for his head, Dev'lia blocked it off with his left forearm and slashed her across the face with his other hand.

She had to take a few steps back as she wiped the four slashes of blood from her face, and stared back at Dev'lia in shock for ruining her beautiful complexion. With a vicious scream, she charged for him again, punching his other clawed hand away, and smacked him in the snout again with an elbow. She then stomped against his groin, then dragged his head down against her knee.

Dev'lia stumbled back again before recovering from the approaching Lorangal, and he leaped toward her, tackling her to the ground and began choking her. But as she gasped for air, the Ducha then brought both her right against his wrists. The Bothan stood back up from the pain in his hands, then Lorangal kicked both feet up beneath Dev'lia's jaw.

The Ducha then leaped up and began attacking him with another series of vicious blows. But even in the midst of all the pounding he was enduring, the Bothan managed to duck beneath one of them and drove his claws right into Lorangal's pelvis. She roared with pain, only to grab Dev'lia's pained wrists in a strong grip, eliciting more agonized pain from him, before she smacked a combined fist down on top of the back of his head, knocking him to the ground.

But just when he landed, he drove his claws through the soles of her boots, impaling her feet and drawing blood. The Ducha renewed her pained scream, and did it again when Dev'lia ripped his claws out of Lorangal's feet and rocketed himself up to bash his forearm beneath Loranagl's jaw.

The Ducha collapsed to the ground, but managed to kick both bleeding feet to Dev'lia's kneecaps, sending him to the ground on his legs in pain. Nevertheless, he jumped on top of Lorangal and began slashing more of her face and started to rip through her chest.

However, in spite of the white-hot pain engulfing her entire world, Lorangal bashed her arms against Dev'lia's diaphragm and rolled him back to the ground. She then made another combined fist and began bashing him across the snout until it was starting to become nothing more than a bloody mesh.

But with incredible effort, Dev'lia broke through the fog that Lorangal's punches were causing him and plunged his clawed hands straight through the Ducha's chest.

And with similarly incredible effort on her part, Lorangal, with strength impossible to be accorded to someone now in the throes of dying, reached out for Dev'lia's heavily wounded snout and pulled so hard that it was ripped from his face.

And with a final, simultaneous effort on both their parts, Dev'lia plunged both his clawed hands up Lorangal's vagina and began to tear out her intestines; Lorangal, meanwhile, had reached for Dev'lia's furry groin and pulled so hard that he was completely castrated.

The hatred for the other's sex having driven and fuelled them to carry out this fight then died with them as Lorangal collapsed next to the Bothan, the both of them badly wounded, maimed, and soon dead.

.

Back inside Dev'lia's Dirties, Jag and Lasaunge's fight concluded when the former ducked beneath a punch from the latter, grabbed the Zabrak's arm, and flipped him on top of the bar counter that their fight extended to. Jag, internally fuming as he placed all of his anger from being sold into sex slavery thanks to Lasaunge, then smacked his elbow down against the Zabrak's forehead with a loud yell, breaking his neck as it dangled from the edge of the counter, killing the alien. Jag then stepped back as he observed Lasaunge's corpse, hyperventilating from the exertion that he put himself through when he took out his frustrations on the now-dead Zabrak.

And when he turned to survey the rest of the scene around him, Jag found that Jacen, Tenel Ka, and Jaina, now completely clothed, had all but killed the last of Begranda's men.

"Hey, where's Dev'lia and Lorangal?" Jaina asked.

"I think they went outside," Tenel Ka said.

Jacen, Tenel Ka, Jaina, and Jag then rushed outside, and stopped in shock - at least Jacen and Tenel Ka did, while Jaina and Jag all but looked at the following scene stoically - at the messy, bloody ruins of the Hapan and Bothan.

"Um... does anyone want to go after Begranda now?" Jacen asked without turning away from the scene.

"Yeah, let's do that, Jacen," Jaina responded, still not taking her eyes off the scene, though still not demonstrating any emotion from the disturbing site.

Jacen briefly regarded his sister, wondering what she must have gone through, before the four of them all turned to leave the dome city.

"Wait, what about the dancers?" Jaina asked, stopping the foursome in their tracks.

Jacen then turned back to Dev'lia's Dirties and headed back inside.

"Ladies," he said to the horrified dancers, "would you like to come with us?"

They all nodded without comment, and followed Jacen and the others outside.


	23. Chapter 23

After boarding his personal shuttle and seating himself in his specialized spot at the ship's rear, with a retinue of bodyguards - minus Lasaunge, unfortunately - and multi-species dancers surrounding him, Begranda contacted the shuttle's droid pilot by activating the built-in comm on his left armrest.

"Is everything ready yet, droid?" the Hutt asked.

"Yes, Milord," the droid replied stoically.

"Then fly us out of here this instance!" Begranda commanded harshly.

"Yes, Milord," the droid repeated just as stoically.

From one of the viewports in his lounge area, Begranda saw that the shuttle rose up along the walls of this dome's hangar bay before the scenery changed to that of the desolate, brownish background of the nameless planet that the Hutt had owned. Begranda felt himself start to secrete nervous sweat from his flabby pores as he saw starfighters - both the motley sort belonging to him and the Hapan Miy'tils belonging to Ducha Lorangal - destroy each other in the background.

If only he could make it up to the _Be Grand_, his personal Star Destroyer, and escape the system, perhaps... perhaps he could re-establish himself elsewhere. Maybe Janag and her fellow shift Aristocras in the Chiss Ascendancy could spare him some more territory that the secluded government had yet to get its hands on.

But all that was dashed out the viewport when the Solo twins, Jacen and Jaina, suddenly appeared before him.

.

Minutes before, after the Solo twins, Jag, Tenel Ka, and Jaina's fellow surviving dancers made it back to the _Faux Harla_, Jaina, finally seated back in the pilot chair of her YT freighter with Jag in the co-pilot seat, took control and piloted the ship out through the dome's exit above.

While Jaina's fellow dancers huddled in the _Harla_'s lounge area, Jacen and Tenel Ka were in the upper and lower gun turrets of the ship respectively, aiding the YT's automatic turret as they blew away Lorangal's Miy'tils and Begranda's motleys.

"I can sense a Hutt presence not too far away!" Jacen said, communicating through the headphones that linked him to Jaina, Jag, and Tenel Ka. "I think it might be Begranda! I'm going to teleport myself over to his location, but I have to concentrate, so I'll have to stop firing."

"You do what you have to to stop Begranda, Jacen," Jaina said.

"Alright," Jacen said, and then he fell into concentration to pinpoint Begranda's exact position.

Back in the _Harla_'s cockpit, however, Jaina switched on the autopilot and vacated her seat, turning to her husband. "You take over."

"What?" Jag asked even as he complied, seating himself where his wife just was. "What are you doing?"

"I'm gonna join Jacen in stopping Begranda," was all Jaina said before she bolted out of the cockpit.

Grimacing, Jag nevertheless forced himself to put Jaina out of his mind for the moment as he switched off the autopilot and took control of the ship.

Seconds later, just as Jacen finally pinpointed Begranda and decided to teleport, Jaina had made it to the upper gun turret and latched herself onto her brother.

And just like that, they had appeared in the lounge area of Begranda Degrona Jaluub before Jaina released herself from Jacen.

Jacen was about to ask his sister what she was doing, only to remember where he was when he saw the group of guards standing before their Hutt master, armed with electric pikes or assault rifles.

Simultaneously, the twins whipped out their lightsabers - Jaina's having been recovered among the possessions that Dev'lia had kept in his office - and activated them. They immediately batted back the lethal bolts that were directed at them, killing the firers, before the remaining guards - the ones armed with the pikes - charged at them.

Though much more of a match for the two Jedi than the guards that were armed with the blasters, Jaina and Jacen managed to easily deflect the strikes inflicted by their opponents before striking the enemy humans and aliens down in the span of over a quarter of a minute.

And just as Jaina had finished hacking away at her last opponent, she instinctively leaped over to Begranda, her purple-bladed lightsaber aimed at the Hutt's heart.

"Jaina, no!" Jacen shouted as he reached out a hand to stop his sister.

But it was too late - even as Jacen used the Force to fling Jaina away from Begranda, her lightsaber had already sunk into the fat folds of the Hutt's flesh, right where his massive heart was.

Jacen looked between the now-dying Hutt to his sister, who still had a hand out in the general direction of her lightsaber, keeping it active with her own Force-use. She then locked eyes with him, making it clear that she knew that he would try to stop her so that the Hutt would face proper justice for all that he had done.

Jacen returned his sister's stare with a look of understanding and sympathy - with maybe a touch of empathy - but also of disappointment.

Nevertheless, Jacen released the Force-hold that he had on his sister, knowing that Begranda's time was up now, and he allowed Jaina to throw herself back over to the doomed Hutt; she then slashed her lightsaber out through his body and began viciously hacking away at him, sending pieces of Hutt flesh and gore hurtling throughout the shuttle's lounge area.

And all the while, Jaina screamed just as violently as she slashed, tears streaming down her face as she put all the rage that had built up within her - the rage brought about by all that Dev'lia had done to her - onto that sick Bothan's boss, attaining the vengeance that had been denied to her when Lorangal killed him just as he killed the Ducha.

Even after Begranda was long dead, and little was left of him that wasn't splashed all over the lounge area, Jaina still kept hacking away until there was a green, bloody smear where his form was, and she cut down even through that, sizzling the blood as she chopped away at his specially-designed chair.

At that, she stopped for a moment, standing there, breathing hard as she let the tears continue to streak down her cheeks.

Then she finally deactivated her lightsaber, allowed it to clatter to the deck even as she dropped to her knees, and began outright sobbing, the memories of all that Dev'lia had done to her now taking their full effect on her psyche.

Without even hesitating, Jacen rushed up behind his sister, his own lightsaber deactivated and hooked back onto his belt, and bent down to embrace her in a consoling hug; an embrace that she immediately responded to by clutching onto him even tighter as she buried her face in his shoulder.

They kept that way even as the shuttle's engines were hit by a few lasers from a Miy'til; consciously aware of the danger that he and his sister were now in, Jacen instantly raised up a powerful Force-bubble that protected himself and Jaina from the eventual crash that came.

.

After sensing that Jaina had left with Jacen to stop Begranda, Tenel Ka abandoned her duty of firing lasers at enemy fighters - something that somehow reminded her of how she abandoned her duties back in the Hapes Consortium - as she rushed into the _Faux Harla_'s cockpit to get a better find of where Jaina and Jacen were - again, something that made her momentarily reflect on her larger abandonment.

Nevertheless, she put that out of her mind as she looked out through the viewport, coordinating her sight with her Force-senses to find where the Solo twins were. Widening her eyes when she finally did see them with Force-enhanced vision, she pointed out through the viewport.

"There they are!" she quickly informed Jag.

The Chiss-raised human then brought his ship down toward the indicated spot without a word, where Jacen was bent over an unconscious Jaina beside the flaming ruins of Begranda's personal shuttle. After Jag landed the shuttle and lowered the landing ramp, he and Tenel Ka rushed outside to meet up with the twins.

"She fainted from the crash," he informed Jag and Tenel Ka as he lifted his sister's unconscious form into his arms, "but I managed to protect both of us from the bulk of the landing. I think that's good for her for now."

Jag and Tenel Ka looked at Jacen curiously. "Why?" they both asked him.

"Let's just say she'll need some help," Jacen said as he headed over to the lowered ramp.

"Begranda's dead, isn't he?" Tenel Ka asked at Jacen's retreating form.

The Jedi Grand Master stopped in his tracks without turning back to face his friend. "Yes," he said without inflection.

"Because of all that Dev'lia did to her?" Jag asked.

Jacen turned his head to look at his brother-in-law. "Yes," he replied with the same empty tone. He then turned back to the _Harla_ and continued up the ramp, where Jag and Tenel Ka followed suit.

Moments later, with all four of them back aboard and the landing ramp back in place, the _Harla_ took back to the sky, piloted by Jacen this time; Tenel Ka was seated next to him, acting as his co-pilot, while Jag sat beside his unconscious wife in the ship's medbay.

Soon, they had left behind the barren world that was only good for underground mining.

.

By the time the _Harla_ had returned to space, none of the capital vessels belonging to Begranda nor any of the Battle Dragons belonging to Lorangal remained; they were all but flotsam, with only a few space-exposed bodies floating around here and there. What few Miy'tils and Begranda-owned starfighters remained were still duking it out with their opponents, vainly trying to scrounge a victory amidst the carnage around them.

The only capital-level vessel that remained was, surprisingly, the _Service Sender_ at the far edge of the system.

"Well, I'll be damned," Jacen said with a satisfied grin. "Not only did Udono keep his word and stayed in the system, he actually survived."

"Luckily for him, not a whole lot of starfighters were interested in the Dreadnaught," Tenel Ka commented.

"I guess it pays to keep your word," Jacen said. "Maybe I'll lobby harder for him and his crew to get a reduced sentence when I see him in court."

The _Harla_'s comm then buzzed with an incoming transmission from the _Sender_. Jacen activated the comm to receive the transmission.

"Grand Master Solo, are you there?" Udono's nervous voice asked.

"Yes, Captain, I'm still here," Jacen replied, "and I'll be landing in your hangar bay."

"Good to know," the Rodian replied, his tone filled with shushed resentment from the fact that Jacen didn't die during the battle.

Once the _Harla_ was back in the _Sender_'s hangar bay, the Dreadnaught turned and - almost reluctantly, as if her will was also her sleezy captain's - jumped into hyperspace.


	24. Epilogue

Following the _Service Sender_'s initial jump into hyperspace just to get out of the system that the now-late Begranda Degrona Jaluub owned, it dropped back out in a nearby empty system to receive instructions from Jacen as to where the Dreadnaught should go next.

"To Denon," he told Captain Udono on the ship's bridge.

The Rodian sighed in defeat. "Very well," he said before turning to relay Jacen's order.

After the _Sender_ initiated her next jump that would begin her journey to Denon, Jacen turned and left the bridge.

His first stop: the room that Jaina and Jag were now sharing.

The Grand Master stopped outside the door to the cabin and knocked. "Jaina? Jag?"

"Come in, Jacen," Jaina's voice responded. It was without inflection, yet full of repressed emotion, as if this were a time to be repressing her feelings.

Jacen entered the quarters to find his sister and brother-in-law sitting together on their cabin's bed, holding each other even as they turned to look at the Grand Master.

"Mind if I sit down?" Jacen asked.

Jaina patted the spot beside her that wasn't occupied by Jag.

"Thank you," Jacen said before occupying the indicated spot next to his sister.

"I don't want to share what I went through down on that planet with you, Jacen," Jaina said. "I don't think it'd do either of us any good at all."

"Fair enough," Jacen said. "I hope that the both of you will recover from what you went through." He gave a silent nod to Jag.

"We hope so, too, Jacen," Jag said.

"I promise the both of you," he said, "I'll get you the best help that the galaxy will have to offer."

Jaina looked at her brother. "You're not going to chastise me for what I did to Begranda?"

Jacen shook his head. "Even if I still believed in the dark side of the Force, and even if I thought that Hutt didn't deserve what you gave him, Jaina, I'd still do everything in my power to make sure that you and Jag get better again."

Jaina gave her brother a sad smile. "Thank you, Jacen." She then extended one of her arms to embrace her brother while still maintaining a hold on her husband.

Minutes later, after agreeing with Jaina and Jag that the spouses should be left alone, Jacen left their cabin and went to the next one, where he hoped he could finally settle his business with Tenel Ka.

After knocking on the Hapan's door and receiving her, "Come in," he opened the door and entered to be silently grateful that she was still dressed as she stood in the center of the room.

"You wanna sit down?" Jacen asked as soon as the door behind him was closed, waving to the bed behind his friend.

"I prefer to stand," Tenel Ka answered.

"Good. So do I."

He then closed the rest of the gap between himself and Tenel Ka and stopped by standing only a couple of feet from her.

"Have you decided whether or not you should return to the Consortium yet?" Jacen inquired.

Tenel Ka nodded. "But only temporarily."

Jacen gave her a quizzical look.

"I'll go back and help the Consortium rebuild from the chaos that I left it in," Tenel Ka began, "and them I'm going to help establish it to becoming a democracy before I leave."

"That may take some time," Jacen pointed out. "Years, probably."

"Then I will continue to serve for years, if I have to," Tenel Ka said. "But as long as I'm alive and able, I will see to it that the Hapes Consortium becomes a fair democracy, one worthy of joining the Alliance of the Galaxy."

"You might get even more assassination attempts than usual," Jacen stated.

"After everything that the Consortium has just gone through, I'd pity the foolish Duchas who would dare go after their Queen Mother again," Tenel Ka said. "You see, when I return, I will remind those ungrateful Duchas just what would happen to the Consortium if they should dare try to kill me; I left and returned of my own free will. What should happen when my return is impossible? And from the last HoloNet update I saw, just before the second hyperspace jump, I saw that the few remaining Duchas are still warring over the vacant throne on Hapes. It's time that I put a stop to it once and for all."

"Assuming you do succeed in turning the Consortium into a democracy," Jacen said, "where will you go after? What will you do?"

"Return to Dathomir," Tenel Ka said, "and live out the rest of my days there."

"You're welcome to come to Denon, to rejoin the rest of the Jedi Order," Jacen said.

"I'll consider it," Tenel Ka said.

Jacen grinned. "You know, by the way, I noticed that you've started using contractions in your speech. What is up with that?' He said that last sentence in a deliberately awkward fashion to emphasize the "What is."

"You do not think that it suits me?" Tenel Ka returned both the grin and awkward delivery to emphasize the "do not."

"I think it suits you well," Jacen said. His tone then became a little bit more serious but no less friendly. "And it seems like you may not need me to help you find someone to care about you anymore."

"I hope I will find someone someday, Jacen," Tenel Ka said.

"I hope you do, too," Jacen said. "Always remember, though; if you ever feel alone, the Force will always be there for you."

Tenel Ka couldn't help but chuckle at that. "Good platitude, Jacen; it would work unless you're around an ysalamiri."

Jacen tilted his head in acknowledgement. "Well, I'm sure that the Force would still be around in some fashion when even a Force-repressing bubble is around."

"Nice save," Tenel Ka quipped.

"Hey, I'm the Grand Master of the Jedi Order, it's kinda my job to be wise and everything," Jacen said with a laugh.

Tenel Ka shared that laugh; and when it finally died down, Jacen said, "I hope you do find happiness one day, Tenel Ka."

After she nodded, Jacen turned and left the cabin.

.

When the _Service Sender_ finally jumped out of hyperspace for the last time to reach Denon, it was immediately hailed by the planet's Orbital Control.

With Jacen on hand aboard the bridge, standing beside Udono at the comm station, he made sure that the Rodian identified himself, his crew, and who exactly they were.

It wasn't long after that when several Alliance of the Galaxy military-grade shuttles rocketed into the _Sender_'s hangar bay, dispensing several groups of troops to storm through the Dreadnaught, rounding up and arresting everyone whom Udono identified, including the captain himself.

Jacen, Tenel Ka, Jaina, Jag, the dancers from Begranda's planet, and Lorangal's former sex slaves were the only ones to go free from the troops' arrests as they were escorted down to Denon.

Upon arriving down in the military spaceport, Jacen saw to it with an AG officer that the dancers and the ex-male slaves would be shipped off to a rape crisis center that dealt with both male-given rape and female-given rape.

Jaina and Jag were among those who would be sent to that rape crisis center; and Jacen managed to give his sister and brother-in-law a wave of goodbye as they were escorted to another shuttle.

And that just left Jacen and Tenel Ka to be met by AG Admiral Gavin Darklighter and Acting Grand Master Corran Horn.

"It's good to have you back, Master Solo," Corran said.

"It's good to be back, Master Horn," Jacen replied. "And I hereby relieve you of your title of Acting Grand Master."

Corran nodded. "Would you like me to let Master Hamner know of your return? He's due to wake up from his coma tomorrow, as the doctors say."

"You can do that, thank you, Master Horn," Jacen said.

"And I'm sorry to hear what happened to Jaina and Jag," Corran said.

Jacen grimaced. "So am I."

"Master Solo, Master Horn," Admiral Darklighter cut in, "I am afraid that I will need to bring the Queen Mother to a private meeting right now."

Jacen nodded to the admiral before turning to look back at Tenel Ka. "Farewell, my friend, and may the Force be with you."

Tenel Ka returned the nod. "Goodbye, Jacen." She then turned and joined Darklighter as Jacen and Corran also turned away to leave the spaceport.

Minutes later, Darklighter brought Tenel Ka to a private meeting room. There, Chief of State Cal Omas and Chief of Staff Wynn Dorvan waited in one of the several seats around the circular table.

Once Tenel Ka and Darklighter were both seated, Omas said to the former, "I'm glad you're back, Your Highness. So, do you mind telling me where exactly you've been while your Consortium was engulfed in chaos?"

There was no sense lying; adopting a stoic face, Tenel Ka answered, "Because I was unable to handle the pressures of continuing to rule the Hapes Consortium, Chief Omas."

"I see," Omas replied with an understandable note of disapproval in his tone. "So, after abandoning your duties to leave your people in chaos, Your Highness, do you believe that you can help them recover from where you left them?"

"I believe I can do so," Tenel Ka said with confidence that sounded shakeable.

"In that case," Omas continued, "I'll see to it, Your Majesty, that you will be granted a military escort that will take you back to Hapes so you may reclaim the still-vacant throne of your Consortium."

"Thank you, Chief Omas," Tenel Ka replied.

Omas nodded. "That will be all, Your Majesty." He then turned his attention to the man who brought Jacen and Tenel Ka here. "Admiral Darklighter, if you will?"

Darklighter nodded, stood up, and said to Tenel Ka as he waved to the door, "This way, Your Highness."

.

Days later, Lerok, seated comfortably on the cot of his prison cell in the Borsk Fey'lya Correctional Institution, opened up the datapad that granted him limited access to the HoloNet. There, he saw that Queen Mother Tenel Ka Djo had returned to the Hapes Consortium, resuming her duties after her unexplained disappearance, in which she proclaimed that after she rebuilt her Consortium from the chaos - which had been all but quelled by her reappearance - that she left it to wither under, she would make her government into a democracy.

Skipping over with relative disinterest, Lerok found a headline that piqued his interest, and made him feel slightly better; Baron Soontir Fel, having returned from his time of asylum in the Alliance of the Galaxy, had returned the Chiss Ascendancy with AG backup with evidence against several Aristocras, including Kanak, Janag, and the other corrupt Chiss that saw to it that they would be facing life sentences in prison, just as Lerok - and, as he knew it, Jeeshaw and their other co-conspirators formerly in the AG military - were now facing.

After flipping through some more relatively unimportant news, Lerok turned off the datapad and sat back, slightly content in knowing that even though he went down, so did his co-conspirators in the Ascendancy.

Still, he did wonder what had happened to Begranda and that little operation he had with that pervert Dev'lia...

.

After making sure that baby Miko had been fed and his diaper changed, Jacen sung his infant son a soothing lullaby while Danni watched from the threshold of the nursery in satisfaction.

Once Miko was peacefully snoring, Jacen turned and followed Danni out of the nursery.

"Have you heard from Jaina and Jag recently?" Danni asked her husband.

"They said they're making progress to recovering from what Dev'lia and Lorangal did to them," Jacen said.

"How about Jaina, after she killed Begranda?" Danni asked.

"I help her through that with our twin bond when she needs that help," Jacen said. "It's taking some time, but there are now signs of hope that she's recovering from that, too."

Danni smiled. "Well, that's good to know."

Jacen returned the smile. "I hope you don't mind, Danni, but I'd like some time to myself; help Jaina out a little bit more through our bond."

Danni placed a hand on her husband's shoulder. "You do what you have to, honey." She then gave him a brief kiss. "I love you."

"I love you, too, dear," he replied before she turned away to enter their bedroom.

Once the door had closed behind her so that she could go to sleep for the night, Jacen turned to the living area of his family's quarters in the Jedi Temple and sat down on the floor in a cross-legged position. He then shut his eyes and fell into a deep meditation, reaching out to his sister to further help her recover from all that she had went through.


End file.
